I do not think anyone here is “rude”. This is the reason most old members stay here for years and decades. Do not know where the “rude” comes from.
Anyhow, I’ve ordered many jujube, persimmon and Chinese hawthorn trees from Cliff. Those are going to be hard to replace. Randy Myers passed away years ago. That was the other sad part.
It is just hard to link nursery and business together. When I think of nurseries who sell bare root fruit (apple and pear etc.) trees for $10 each, I know this is only a hobby for me. Even at $35 or so for jujube and persimmon, it is still hard to make a living from doing that.
I’m co-sponsor of a high school gardening club. I get about 30-40 kids out twice a week and we are learning. We’ve done seeds, flowers and vegetables, raised beds, irrigation, hydroponics. The interest is there.
Our production was spotty in a very forgiving year. But the initial year is over.
I want to teach grafting. I’ve done ok grafting. 1 persimmon out of 1. 5/8 plum. 1 of 12 pawpaw. 7/9 apples. I use a knife, ok a box cutter or pocket knife. That’s not going to fly. Principal has already been wary of items requested by the medical tech teachers. Are “omega”-type grafting things pretty easy? Any suggested tutorials for using one?
I’ve never ordered more than 1 rootstock at a time, anyone have a preferred source for multiples of 10’s or 25’s?
I was planning to order from a couple places, but I’ve never shopped for such things in quantity. most of my successes grafting are only on a few established trees.
Those should work great to do whip and tongue graft giving good pressure/contact… or are you thinking that such tools would not be allowed at the school? That would be a great graft for the students to learn if they can. I haven’t used the omega type things, but didn’t need to. My concern with such a tool would be if they make a good clean cut and if you get the necessary pressure to encourage good healing. I had heard some complaints about that.
For Apple rootstock, I’ve been very happy with Cummins Nursery. A fairly large selection of available varieties, and they are always sent me good product.
It seems I am the only one who has never heard of Cliff or his wonderful nursery. I hope things get better for him! This leads into the fact that I had no idea where he is located. I had to Google it and found several England Nurseries. Please give locations when posting so we’ll have some reference to growing climate, proximity for possible shopping, etc. Is this his? http://www.nuttrees.net/
I have bought a grafting tool that comes with 3 different blade shapes, omega is one of those shapes, I think of it as a horseshoe shape. The one thing in common for all the grafting tools that have an omega blade shape, well the budget ones anyway, is that the blades it comes with they dull down very fast and may not be sharp enough to begin with, so I bought a replacement blade set that is supposed to be much better quality than the ones that come with the tool. If it works well I could post on here how well it worked and what I actually got, yet since I have not even tried it yet, I am not going to do so yet. I will be using it in the spring. The only reason that I already bought it is because how hard it’s getting to buy things when you actually need them these days.
England’s is in McKee KY. Real close to Berea KY. I lived and went to school there but wasnt interested back then. Wonderful area to visit… lots of antiques and primitive stuff small coffee shops etc. The whole area is beautiful in the spring and fall. Well worth a trip. I visit the area a couple times a year and pick the flea markets and antique stores. Hope to visit the orchard next spring.
Thank you! I thought it was the one judging by the content on the webpage.
It sounds like a wonderful area - I will have to add it to my go-to list when I do my 'round the country trip in my public transit bus RV conversion!
Hmmmm…they (Berea college) have an agriculture program…so that’s an interesting thought you have @krismoriah
Might pass that thought to a couple retired employees I happen to have planted some things for…including blueberries.
I’ll email some of my connections and if any feedback looks promising …
Teaching kids grafting is such a terrific idea! In fact you could do a whole propagation unit: a) growing from cuttings - figs are almost foolproof! 2) layering - the soda bottle method is simple and there may be plants on the school grounds that would be suitable and 3) grafting - using a omega-type tool to graft apples or pears that kids could take home at end of school year. Fedcoseeds.com has good prices on rootstock bundles and the research re: rootstock types could be part of the process.
As a retired 6th garden science teacher, I agree that the box cutter method is way too tempting and could end up a disaster! But the aligning and wrapping of rootstock and scion is perfect for hs dexterity. It would be the kind of experience the kids would always remember!
I do all of my grafting using a simple splice graft and everyone I’ve taught it to has success the first time they try it because it is so easy. AM Leonard’s carries a double bladed Italian hand pruner that makes the best cuts for it as any I’ve used, but any sharp hand pruner can work- you just can’t get as long a slanting cut. I’ve used it for harder to take species like persimmons and paw paws as well as peaches, plums, pears and apples, doing a couple hundred grafts a year.
I would hope he eventually gets back into selling plants too. Some varieties have just become so rare since he stopped selling. Peaceful heritage sells his paw paw but they sold out in a matter of minutes and I found another nursery selling JT-02 persimmon but they also sold out far before I could obtain a tree.