I have a Prok American persimmon. It’s about 18 inches tall and it had three scaffolding branches at the top. The bunnies decapitated it, essentially turning it into a whip. It put out new growth at the top. Well, the bunnies came along and decapitated it again. This time I surrounded it with hardware cloth. It is grafted pretty high up. I have about 4 inches of Prok at the top, and the rest is rootstock. I have noticed now that it is developing buds at the rootstock, but not at the scion.
Anything I can do to induce budding at the scion? When the bunnies tore at the top this most recent time, I removed the hanging branches, but I didn’t prune. Should I (1) wait? (2) prune the top a few centimeters to see if that induces budding near the top? (3) notch it?
Were any of the bunny’s left overs including any buds? If so throw the pieces in ice water until you can prepare to chip bud them back to either the remaining graft or rootstock. If there are none you may need to let the rootstock bud and grow a season while you look for scions.
Dennis
Kent, wa
Any idea where I might be able to find some prok scion wood? 
I would make a nice clean cut at the top , removing damage , saving as much good wood of Prok as possible.
Remove all shoots from the rootstock, now and others that may appear,hope for growth of the Prok
Im worried if I remove all the shoots, the rootstock will die from starvation.
I want to make a clean cut, but leave the shoots for now and see if the scion rebounds. Thoughts?
In my experience if you let those shoots from the rootstock grow,
That’s where it will grow,
I remove all shoots from the rootstock , to force grafts,
It’s like “ grow here or else !” They usually get the idea.
A grafted Prok is worth much more than a rootstock.
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I pruned the top, nice and clean. What I want to do is wait a little bit and see if other shoots emerge on the scion. Each day that passes I see more and more buds, but none on the scion yet.
If you insist on letting rootstock shoots grow I would suggest pinching the tops off all of them. I believe removing them is best.
Good luck !
All right. I removed all the shoots. Fingers crossed!
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