It’s a wonderful world isn’t it, yeah?
Have a good one, Mark.
Dax
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Giving this a go with some peaches and nectarines. I had it on my basement floor for a few days which probably wasn’t the best idea since it is a little colder there. Moved it up to the table.
Hope this works since I have some cool stuff from UC Davis like John Rivers nectarine and Harbrite peach.
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Either or Tom. Basement floor or like you did. You want cool temps and darkness.
Dax
I’ll try to be short in thought but post pictures for enjoyment, as-well.
You can do a number of things with a hot callus system. What I’m doing is removing the bagged and bareroot grafted-trees and placing them in my second refrigerator. They came off the pipe after 21-days and go right in the fridge until my area is finished frosting/freezing & then I will plant them.
This grafting process is limitless for the most part. You may purchase rootstocks and as long as you keep the roots moist, you may put them in a fridge/walk in cooler or ??? and keep them dormant just as you would do with scionwood… and you can come back and graft on them anytime you have scionwood. I know of an outfit in the USA that has a big walk in cooler where they’ve held seedlings for 7-years prior to selling them. Of course they know way more than me about climate controlled (cooling.) So, yeah, I wrote about all this stuff initially but you can be clever with ways to go about hot callus pipe grafting. You think you should have a few rootstocks hanging around just in-case important scionwood crosses your hands, put a few in your 2nd fridge to be ready.
I should say to everyone that no matter what, keep the bud/(s) from the scion outside of the pipe! Even if your union (working area/cuts area) isn’t completely inside the pipe - that doesn’t matter. It’ll still stay warm being partly encased in the foam.
Well, now for pictures. Any grafts you see in containers broke bud so it was necessary to get them to (as much) sunlight as possible. You have to keep an eye on your grafts for buds that may break because once they do, they must see a lot of light or at minimum be in a window in your home… hopefully a south or west-facing…
Dax
As some of you know I’ll be growing (grafted) pecans, hickories, hicans, persimmons and pawpaws in the future and in 30" tall Treepots; Stuewe Treepots.
I have been grafting and building.
I had to replicate “above” - what was below. That’s the best way I can say it. This bench took 7-days to finish working 6-8 hours a day. I had built it to hold various size Treepots in “shoeboxes” - but it had to be modified of course to hold 30" Treepots. It’s a lattice system of 4" squares above and below. Empty containers weighing virtually nothing stay tight in place with 25-30 mph winds. It’s solid. 452 slots available on this bench.
Here are bareroot grafts (front) and the first run of grafts in well-rooted containers which I began graftin/putting on a callus pipe, the second week of January. I put them in those rubbermaids and stood them upright in containers in a dark area of my basement until they woke up. So I had to get them to light immediately. If you think ahead and if you have a greenhouse which I happen to have, I made room for all those grafts soon after & now they receive much more light.
The bagged/bareroot grafts go into my refrigerator (and should not freeze.) So turn yer beer fridges down a notch or two. Once May arrives in my zone 5 climate, I’ll remove them all, they’ll all be dormant still from having been in a ‘cooler’ and I’ll pot them up and let them wake up naturally in a nice, big, pot.
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These are the middle of Jan. grafts I did that are now inside my greenhouse. The mix for these is Pro-mix from the big box stores. I went all out and bought a professional mix from an outfit not so far away and would like to show you the difference. What I have is all organic and that’s all he mixes (is organics.)
(Pro-mix)
Here I’m showing you to keep the rootstocks free of any stimulated growth that shows up.
Now the mix I purchased which can be seen at this link (scroll to the bottom for Tree & Shrub)
Here’s this organic mix
The ‘few’ bareroot’s that broke bud shortly after being on the pipe. It’s all the same cultivars for the most part - so tells you it’s all symmetrical in some way.
I love tip buds on hickory. That to me is pure beauty like someone else might think about spring bulbs!
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Dax, your posts are some of the most informative to me here on GF. That’s a big deal since there are so many heavy hitters on here.
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Thanks a million, Ram.
Dax
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Great post @Barkslip ! Love the pics, sweet set-up! You have it dialed in. Do you have any problems with birds/robins when you put them outside. The robins are constantly messing with my rooted fig cuttings gathering materials for their nests, even stole some of my white plant labels last year. Now I have a few that are unknown, I should have labeled them in 2 different places, darn it.
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Gotta stake. Other than that no… not here. never had birds taking tags.
No stakes = lots and lots of broken grafts.
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3-days off to relax. It’s been a pretty long run. I built the beginning of the second bench on Sat. This one will be completely different from the other (naturally) because I’m beginning from scratch.
Best regards, ya’all.
Dax
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today’s project graft wowza to carmine jewel seedlings and set up hot callus…
was tricky because scion material was much smaller than rootstock! hopefully a few take
roots on these seedlings are impressive, all were larger than above ground portion…
from 2 small sticks i managed 10 grafts.
instead of removing roots and causing more stress i put them in deep pots.
leaving them on ground to keep cold that is still near freezing. hot pipe seems to work well. when set at 70f it turns on at 69 and power goes of at 70f and temp quits climbing at 75f. sensor is in contact with aluminum bar inside insulation as are the grafts.
covered with synthetic blankets with white plastic over the top and held down with hardwood stakes…
im not sure what temp is ideal to heal the wounds. let me know if i should lower it please…
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Very cool. If you Google temperature hot callus pipe they give you a range. All I know is that extra warm works very-well. People using my friend Ryan’s whole system and set-up are at 83-84 I think. That’s the end of the range from what I remember.
Someone asked me what the best temps are for certain things. I don’t have a clue. I need to find someone who knows or, find a book.
Dax
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do you think that i should maybe wait till roots start to wake with such small grafted pieces? several don’t even come out opposite side of the pipe!
Well that’s what I was looking at after I posted, wondering if you have the buds outside the pipe. You can but it’s not advisable to have them inside the foam. They can and likely will break bud prior to the union callusing, Derek.
What I do is tip them at severe angles to get the bud even if 1 mm anywhere outside of the pipe I feel like the heat still radiates beneath at the union, upward.
That’s how I do it.
Dax
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checked the pipe, no way to move buds out. increased temp to 73 which should provide heat from 72 to 78f. thinking maybe buds won’t break for lack of fluid pressure until graft heals, hard to know though… im gonna remove some early i think, maybe after 7 to 10 days…
My thinking is the cherry (Cornelian) or whatever it is, I just know that stuff is dense as hell. That’s gonna take 3-weeks.
I think what you’re doing is brilliant-Derek in grafting onto root (and everyone knows the suckering is never gonna be the cultivar…) it’s the same as pawpaw.
Dax
hot callus cherry aborted…
By BOB PURVIS
Bench-grafting stone fruits in the spring can be done, but the requirements for success are more rigorous than are those for apples or pears. In late January I discussed with Dr. Brian Smith, the stone-fruit breeder at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls, what the requirements are for bench-grafting cherries. Based on his experience, he said that cherry rootstocks should not be grafted when totally dormant, but when there is about ¼ to ½” of new growth coming out of the top of the rootstock. Possibly because the buds and leaves of cherry are large and use a lot of water, he recommends keeping freshly grafted cherry rootstocks at a temperature of 55 to 60F in a high-humidity environment. At those temperatures, callus tissue will form but the scion buds will be slower to break dormancy
Thanks for the post, I saw this on the web site. But I dont think he is explicitly saying the cherry will not work with hot callusing.
As I read it, as long as the root zone is getting enough moisture and the graft union is sealed with parafilm or similar, there is enough moisture/high humidity at the graft zone.
The usual advice for persimmon is that there is atleast 1" of growth before grafting but I’ve had far better success grafting to dormant rootstock using the hot callusing approach. I suspect it is the same with cherry and people haven’t tried it. The only difference I think is that the graft temperature has to be lower for Cherries.
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Amazing how fast chestnuts give results on the pipe - a week tops.
Mulberries aren’t too far behind, around 14 days. Their callis tends to be more subtle and blend with the colour of the wood.
Walnuts have been vexing so far, though. The bleeding is a real tough problem, even for dormant, cold stock. I might try sweating a few and banana/four flap grafting.
Another occasional issue is the rapidly growing callous busting through the parafilm so things get a little dry in there. I guess one solution is electrical taping the whole union, but that makes my peeking tendencies frustrated.