Most of the prunus is from Davis, which seems to be the tough one to get wood from.
Ughā¦ i should have tried years agoā¦I think Scott in the past received wood from themā¦oh wellā¦ Thanks.
After several emails and phone conversations i was successful in getting scion from Davis last spring but had to provide a fedex no. The scion came in a typical rectangular cardboard box like what Geneva sends but my fedex bill was over $40. I was pretty shocked at the cost am not doing that again.
Itās good to hear that Davis will still send it out (at least as of last year), though $40 seems pretty pricey. They must have done overnight express or something along those lines. Even at $40 though, I think it may actually be worth it to me, given that the wood Iāve received (at least from Geneva and Corvallis) is so nice and the varieties so hard/impossible to find elsewhere. This year is the first year Iāve provided a fedex account number. Maybe it will help me get the plums and apricots from Davis.
Did the USDA email you that it was shipping? For summer budwood, Iāve always received a ship notification and I was curious if it did the same for dormant scion. Good luck with your grafting.
I talked to a lady at the Geneva location yesterday to confirm my order was in their posession. She did have it. Said that the entire website was updated last fall so notifications and such may not have gone out as usual. They are cutting scions and shipping at a fairly fast pace. She said the only notification I will get at this point is when my order ships. She was helpful and seemed happy to be filling orders.
I put in a small order for 3 apple varieties and it went through. But I wasnāt sure what to put when they ask me what reason I wanted it. I wrote something about wanting to test disease resistance in 6a mid atlantic versus the west coast. lol I have no clue if theyād ever send me any but weāll see.
The apple station seems pretty lenient on what they will accept for reasonsā¦ maybe a little too lenient! 
At least there is one govt program that is worth a cr?$ though!
@BobVance: Bob, do you plan to do breeding work with the insect and disease resistant apple varieties you ordered?
Maybe. Right now I want to grow it out and see how it behaves. I think I want one more year to get a better handle on the Kazakhstan apples, then start crossing the best of them with good eating cultivars like Goldrush and Golden Russet. Space limitations are the main issue, with growing out many crosses.
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Iām betting they do speed.
Bob- Wow, great project.
Yeah, it sounds like a very interesting project, maybe the next great Apple !
Might try for budwood in the summer.
I plan to do something similar Bob, so when you do get around to it, post photos. If we both follow the same procedures with the same or similar crosses it will give the results of our experimentation more credence and overall value. We should maybe study a bit first, no doubt there will be issues come up we might be able to avoid. Hopefully others also will be willing to do some minor experimentation and everybody post their results objectively. I think there could absolutely be real value in such an undertaking. None of us have enough space, time or cash to do anything large scale, so careful study and narrowing the experiment criteria would be most valuable.
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I plan on doing some breeding work with those crosses too, in the coming years. Yes, we should all share our results and compare and then (of course!) share the scionwood!! 
I am reading a good old book by A.L. Hagedoorn called āPlant Breedingā that Iād recommend to anyone interested in this stuff. He said the biggest mistake plant breeders make is only evaluating the F1 generation. He said the F2 generation is where you really get the good stuff.
And back on topicā¦ I got an email yesterday that they shipped all the Kazak apples I ordered! Yipee!
Explain F2 generation? So you cross two treesā¦get the offspring and then cross that offspring??? I really zoned out when it came to this stuff back in school.
The author does a much better job explaining it, but say you cross a Kazak apple with, I dunno, Wolf River apple since I was just looking at it. So you cross those 2 and get a bunch of seeds and grow them out. That is the F1 generation. Youāll usually get a balance of both parents. So letās say you grow out 2 of your F1ās and then cross them. You get a bunch of seeds from that cross and then you grow them out, that is (according to Hagedoorn) where you get the best stuff, because you are basically inbreeding for whatever traits you are after. And then you can do backcrossing (back to the original parents, Wolf River and Kazak apple or back to one of the F1 trees) if you are going for one of the traits that they have.
I think his point was that expression of genes are stronger in the F2 and subsequent generations than the F1, and that most amateur plant breeders just cross that Wolf River and Kazak apple and evaluate the F1 and then stop there, when they would get much better discoveries by doing further breeding with it.
Sorry to get so off topic. Maybe I should start another thread.
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I seeā¦ Iāll be honestā¦i never thought to go further. No wonder it takes so much time to develop new varieties.
On the topic of crossing varietiesā¦how does one know which variety to pick to cross?..i asked this on another thread a while back//just wondering if there are anymore thoughtsā¦ so if you have your Kazak appleā¦and your Wolf Riverā¦do you take pollen from Kazak and put it to Wolf or the other wayā¦how do you pick and does it even matter?