You don’t want the heat element turning on and off constantly and I would think a long distance like 10’ would be “off kilter” with constant turning on and turning off.
Before my buddy sent that pdf I was in the process of thinking up a callus generator using window sill heat mats. Looks like that’s what you have there.
I got pretty good results with my first batch of loquat grafts. All made it except one obviously bad scion.
But persimmons are supposed to be tough. I will do them this weekend.
In Germany I worked at a winery on the Mosel River in 2006-07. In the winter we would prune by hand thousands of grape vines. We would also have a team back at the winery working at the vine nursery. This winery would create new vines through grafting, callusing and cold storing. They would plant entire vineyards for other wineries with their grafted stock (vitis lambrusca rootstock with vitis vinifera scion wood.) I remember we would dip freshly grafted stock into hot wax an then place them in bins with a mix of peat moss and perlite. After grafting all of these bins would go into a large room that was kept at a warm temperature. They had very high percentage of success. I’m guessing that’s what these hot callus pipes are doing on a smaller scale. The grafting tool they used was a table mounted, Omega Star grafting machine.
The winery I worked at actually just posted videos and pics of them grafting. They use a bin that can open on the top and the side. They law down a row, the put perlite/peat moss mixture over it, the continue. When bin is finished it goes to that warm room for callousing and root growth to take place. Here’s a few pics of their FB they also have a video up showing the euro stock being grafted to the American rootstock.
Not exactly a pipe but I used 3x20 seedling mats to hot callus persimmon grafts.
Many of the these grafts were scion to root since the shoots were really thin.
Hoping for the best.
I ended up building a 10‘ hot callus pipe today, I’m interested to see how this works out. Thanks for bringing this to my attention Dax. I’ll also attach some pics a guy on a Facebook chestnut site posted regarding his method to grow seedling. In regards to these grafts, I’ll try and get everyone an update around May 1.
*only change I would make to my grafts would be to leave some additional buds since I am now using this method. Hopefully the bud doesn’t sprout in the tube while I‘m out of town. I’ll put my other grafts in the tube next week, to compare.
These are 1 1/4“ x 12“ pvc pipes. The grower said he keeps them in a grow box as show in photo. He gets real nice taproots as you can see and has a large majority of his chestnut seedlings at 3 ft in 3 months. Looks like he uses LED grow lights and fish emulsion every so often to fertilize. The pvc tube allow for taproot growth and easy transplanting. This will be my next project as my stratified chestnuts hopegully Start sending out radicles.
Heck yeah Gary. These go hand in hand. Growing seedlings like that and in that width of a container to use to put on the pipe. The guy’s a genius and the results are incredible. Thanks for sharing your pipe photos too. It’s killer.