I still have a few persimmon scions that were wrapped well and didnt mold with the rest of my scions. There might also be a plum scion or 2 left as well. Is it too late to graft them here in Northern Ohio, zone 6b? Im on the Lake Erie coast and will probably get my first frost sometime between late September-October-ish
No. Not to late. Bud grafting just got in swing good. Saw one of my favorite heritage nurseries newly grafting all sorts of fruit. But this is the South. Our growing season is quite long.
It is just about time for budding with fresh, non-dormant wood. However, I don’t know how well dormant scions would do right now. If they don’t have time to grow new buds and harden for winter the new growth will probably die over winter.
I did try this a bit last year with pawpaw - but later, in September. Everything that grew was killed over winter. On the other hand, a couple of chip buds did not grow in Fall and stayed dormant and grew in spring. Of those, maybe half made it.
I suppose little is lost if you try it and fail.
Could someone point to a good bud graft video for peach this late into the season. I have 5 roots stocks that need to be grafted. I figured I would try bud grafting. If they don’t take, then try scions next spring.
I’ve bud grafted dormant wood this time of year and it usually succeeds. Not as good as fresh budwood but if the stock is good and the wood is still in good shape you have reasonably good odds.
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I starting thinking t-buds would be better and easier and maybe they are sort of? But I’ve since discovered that chip buds seem to work better for me, even though it seems like they shouldn’t. Especially on very small things or things with very soft bark. However, I definitely started with the inverted T bud and had a lot of success.
The videos and tutorial below cover selecting of the bud wood and how to do the graft.
I went with Olpea’s suggestion of waiting until early Sept for peach. They are unhappy with temps >85F. By then, it was still consistently warm and not hot and there was enough time for the graft to callus before winter.
My peaches did not grow anything from those grafted buds in Fall. In Spring they started growing from those grafted buds.
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I don’t know about a good video, but I can give you a few of my own personal insights.
Firstly, you need a really sharp thin bladed knife for bud grafting. When I say sharp, I mean sharp enough to shave the hair off your forearm.
IMO bud grafting is pretty simple if you have the right tools. Aside from a good knife, you should have either parafilm or buddy tape to ensure good success. Sure you can use grafting rubbers, but I don’t like them anywhere near as much for bud grafting as the genuine grafting tapes, (not the cheap plastic crap sold on Amazon).
To me your success rate goes way up with lots of practice. My bud grafting success goes way up after I’ve been doing it for a while. My suggestion would be to cut a bunch of junk branches from roadside fruit trees (or whatever) and start practicing ASAP to get the hang of it. The more you do, the easier it gets. Practice makes perfect as they say. Bud grafting is not hard to do, I’m sure you’ll do great.
Good luck. 
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Last year I grafted up a few dormant scions in August and they did very well. Not as big as others done earlier. But they survived winter just fine.
Truthfully I have a lot of apple rootstock left. But I plan on just lining a bunch out to stool.
You’re quite a bit warmer and your winter comes later than @KrisRos. So while I don’t think it’s hopeless it’s definitely more of risk.
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Yeah. We often pick peppers and tomatoes right into December many years.
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So for peach do you strip the bud from the bud wood or do you cut a chip of wood out that includes the bud?
Top or bottom?
Thanks
I do the bottom one.
So i believe you do a chip graft then.
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That could be the term I guess. It seems to work with about 70% takes I’d estimate. Probably would be higher with fresh bud wood.
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Bottom as well.
I think it’s too much extra handling to strip the wood out IMO. I always put the chip between my lips to prevent oxidation of the chip bud while I make the cut on the rootstock.
I’ve have seen one video where the narrator recommended not to place the chip in your mouth, but I have never found it to hurt my take percentage. I usually end up doing more chip budding than all the other methods and have good confidence with that method.
I’m pretty sure the vast majority of commercially sold fruit trees are all propagated by chip budding, so they must have high confidence in that method.
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I only pop the wood out if it’s really easy. Sometimes it is easy to pop out with woody scions. I don’t know if it makes any difference.
Sometimes the grafted buds look kind of perched on the outside for a while until it grows. On older trees it seems to go away after a year or so. For younger trees it’s a shorter amount of time. I thought maybe popping the wood out would change that but I haven’t noticed it changes that either.
I do mostly chip buds now (not the t-buds). But both have worked for me so I wouldn’t worry too much about which to do.
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I always do chips, they work any time whereas T-buds can sometimes be more challenging, e.g. bark not slipping or stock is small diameter. You also don’t need to try to pop out the wood if its a chip, you need the wood to still be in the chip to get a good alignment.
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Chips are so easy and reliable!
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how long does it take to tell if the chip bud took? Does it take until the next spring or can you tell in the fall?
You can tell in about a month when a callous successfully forms on the grafted chip.
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