When pruning a fruit tree, are all those limbs possible scions for grafting? I see all the pruning videos, and I keep wondering why they don’t keep the limbs. If not, how do you know if something is"scion worthy"?
1 Like
Generally scion wood should be a year old, maybe 2.
1 Like
Got a stick of second year scion recently
one I paid for from a forum member.
I think odds are decent it takes. Have taken second year scions a couple times before and succeeded.
Ideally you prefer last summer’s limbs.
2 Likes
Yes 1 or 2 year old wood is ideal but in a pinch it’s all scion wood.
1 Like
i agree with clarkinks.
Best to use younger wood. But when grafting we’r intrested in a bud. Or even just a internode (spot where leaf exits the shoot)
In most fruit tree’s this is the only spot where there is a spot with apical meristem. And that’s needed to grow new shoots.
On most older wood. you still have the internode and apical meristem. But no developed buds. And thus if you graft with it. It will take a lot of “forcing” for it to grow a shoot.
i can imagine very few scenario’s however where you’d want to graft wood older than 2 years.
Especially with bud grafting technique’s you can graft 20-50 tree’s from a single good 1 year old shoot. (every bud=graft) no need to harvest a whole tree as scion wood.
best check if something is scion worthy, is if there are nice and well developed (large) vegetative buds. Fruit buds do work, but are less desirable.
1 Like
Recently I was trying to research: if a fruit bud is capable of transforming to a growth bud since some scions, even on one year wood have flower buds. I did not find a definitive answer so typically I keep the flower buds on when grafting, unless they outnumber the growth buds. In that case I remove the majority of flower buds. Has anyone had experience with a flower bud eventually turning to a growth bud. For example on a cherry bud the terminal bud usually is a growth bud but the buds in the surrounding cluster are most likely flowers.
Dennis
Kent, wa
Sometimes after blooms fall from a graft that seemed to have only fruiting buds, it begins to sprout out.
Not sure the % of cases this is valid though.
There are cases where the limbs I prune off, I save for future grafting. Recently I cut lager 3-4 year old growth from sweet cherry to graft on sour cherry scions. I am saving the larger pruning to use later this spring to wedge graft another cherry tree that I am top working into 100 % plum/pluot varieties. This type of graft requires rather large diameter scions of about 3/4” diameter to be effective. However, in many cases pruning is done when scions are not dormant or have begun awakening, so the would be no demand for them. For example with stonefruit you typically prune during the spring-summer when the wood is actively growing, so in that case, the green wood cannot be shipped in time to be used by others, although you can use them for summer budding. Hope this better answers your question.
Dennis
Kent, wa
He shows how to determine last year’s growth from older wood…
2 Likes