I’ve given up on NorthStar- too much rot the last few years. I tried to do some grafting on it last year, but this year I got serious.
18 grafts, some of which are double or triple grafts, covering 11 varieties, which include 6 sour cherries, 2 bush cherries, and 3 sweet cherries.
Bob, they say variety is the spice of life!
Simple question, How do I do what you did here. I bought 5 Krymsk 5 rootstock from raintree. I am going to plant 1 or 2 in there intended location and nurse 3 in pots as backups. I have never actually grafted anything before.
I don’t think you want to do what I did here 
. To do that, you need to grow out a variety you don’t like for about 5 years, then cut it back…
It sounds like you just want to graft to a rootstock, so simple cleft or splice grafts should work nicely. Or whip and tongue if you want to get fancy and have the manual skill (I don’t).
In the above pic, I had some larger width branches from the rootstocks, relative to the scion size. So, I was using double cleft grafts (2 scions, one on each side of the cleft in the branch) and double and triple bark grafts.
I have no idea how the bark grafts will work, as I haven’t tried them before. At least with this technique. But, I was pretty happy with how easy they were to make and the kind of contact I appeared to get. But the proof will be in the take rate. I tried to mix in the cleft and bark grafts, so that if the bark grafts bomb I won’t be missing too many varieties.
Yup- I don’t know which ones will work best, so let’s try them all! It will be interesting to see if the dwarfing nature of Northstar continues, when it is only acting as a rootstock.
Must be multi grafted for me. I hope I get some good rootstock growth this year.
Yeah…that will be interesting what sweets do on that rootstock…
This is my sour seedling (meteor i think). Not sure the age…must be 5 years or more now. Its around 7ft…i have pruned it. It looks grafted, but isn’t…it was just cut back a few years back.i think a rabbit chewed on it or something. Its full of blooms that will probably produce no fruit.
Why do you assume it will produce no fruit? I ask that, because my meteor blooms, starts to form cherries, but then they disappear when about 3/8" in diameter. Some years the blooms have frozen or were nonexistent, too. My tree is much larger than that.
It has bloomed the past few years and never set any fruit. Maybe this year will be different? Are they self fruitful? Since i’ve had luck with sweet cherries, i kind of got out of sour cherries (I had northstar, evans, meteor at one time…got rid of all of them).
Will be interesting to see how that turns out. I’ve never seen a bark graft on wood that thin. It’s hardly larger than a pencil.
I have had several scion wood that are very slim. That when I went with bark graft with wood that size.
The only issue with bark graft is how well bark is slipping. If it slips well, no issue grafting.
But in that exact situation, why not using a cleft or even whip and tongue graft? I only do bark grafts to older (thicker) wood. When possible I always prefer cleft, w/t or splice grafts over bark grafts. In my scenario I wouldn’t cut the scion into a wedge but cut like doing a splice graft. In your scenario you of course had to do a wedge since otherwise you would have teared the bark of the stock too much.
Maybe that was just an example with the smallest wood of the stock available and every other bark graft you did was to thicker wood.
Very nice step by step explanation by the way.
This is why i chip bud…so much easier. 
I found one more variety (Salmo, a sweet cherry) which I had forgotten to graft (now 19 grafts, 12 varieties). So the branch choices were limited. The scions were smaller than the branch, so this is a situation where I would have used a double-cleft graft. But, the bark grafts felt so good the other day that I figured I’d use one. In general, I’m not thrilled with double-cleft grafting- it is tricky to get just right and often heals a bit ugly.
But I see your point- if the branch was any smaller, it would have been hard to do the bark graft. It’s the larger branches/scaffolds where double-cleft is particularly hard, so maybe that is the more ideal situation for bark grafts.
I never mastered whip and tongue, but cleft is usually reasonably safe for me. At least it’s safe for apples/pears, with decent rates for everything else except peaches.
I noticed the same thing later in the afternoon when I tried to do this type of graft to an apple and butchered it attempting to peel back the bark. I eventually gave up on it and did a cleft graft elsewhere. They appeared to be at similar stages of growth, but type of tree must play a role in determining bark slipperiness.
I should add that I probably should be more experienced with a graft before creating something like the above. But, I got pretty excited about this graft. I felt like it was easy to do and got me good contact. In particular, it seems idea for tiny scions, something that can be tricky to work with. Normally, tiny scions means that I do a double cleft (which I’m not as fond of), or a cleft graft far out or higher up where the branches get thin enough. This gives me another option and I may have gotten a bit carried away. Maybe I’ll make a pictorial explanation of the cleft graft, as that is what I’m confident works…
I see. Nothing wrong with doing experiments. Your technique might work.
In that exact situation I personally would have done an angled cleft graft to get cambium contact between stock and scion on both sides of the cleft or just a single cleft alingning cambium of scion and stock on just one side. Like you I don’t like double cleft grafts. Both wedges have to have almost the same size to ensure contact on both sides of the graft. In that situation often one of the grafts fails for me. To align only one side I always do better with splice graft or w/t.
Grafting further out is an option I only choose with no other viable option. It can lead to structural problematic trees since you can’t prune beyond the graft without loosing it…
You have to be very careful with the weight of the new growth, since you left so little wood at the grafting point. With your technique the graft has almost no structural strength since new tissue needs time to build and get strong. Thats one clear disadvantage which can be rendered meaningless with good care.
Why do you say that? I bet it will make just enough to feed the birds 
You’ve seen good success with angled grafts? I always assumed that having a line of cambium matching another line of cambium was far better than just having two lines crossing at a single point.
The first time I read this I didn’t get what you meant by size (thinking scion diameter). Thinking about it, and some of the issues I face, I realize that you mean how thick you make the scion wedges. I get around that problem with persistence (you can always keep cutting down on whichever is bigger…), but it is certainly a pain. At the end, I tie it as tightly as I can, to get better contact. Most often, both (or neither) take for me, though there are exceptions.
That’s a good caution. I haven’t had that issue with other types of grafts, but this graft is different, as the new wood is only under bark, not inside of the host tree’s own wood.
Thats exactly the issue I’m referring to. Plus often the “bark flap side” doesn’t take for me (I do a shorter “undercut” at every bark graft too (at the backside of the scion).
Yeah, I’m sorry for the confusion. It’s the language I’m struggling with. School is a long time away and the topic is rather technical…
Actually I have. Last year I did experiment. I did only angled grafts on purpose (cleft, w/t and splice) with apples. 35 grafts, 35 takes.
This year I did stone fruits. Again only angled grafts on purpose. Til now everything seems to be fine. Did 15 grafts, 11 takes. 2 out of 4 peach grafts failed, but thats my usual rate with peaches (still learning).
One week ago I did some more stone fruit grafts, but thats too recent to tell if they are successful.
I don’t have long term data with angled grafts. But looking at the grafts I see absolutely no problem.
That’s pretty good results- at least no worse than normal cleft grafts. And in 35 apple grafts I’d probably have at least 1 or 2 that failed for some reason. How much angle did you put in the scion and how much of a mismatch was there in size?
I’m thinking that too much mismatch (like a 30+ degree angle) could get awkward from a structural standpoint (the bottom of the scion sticking out the side and hitting the tape). It could also impact the later structure of the graft (post healing). But, it sounds like I shouldn’t sweat it if I have a scion that doesn’t quite match, as long as I can give it a slight tilt to get cambium crossing.
To be clear, I believe I would have similar success with well done “normal” grafts. The angled grafts I did purely for experimental reasons, in no situation they were necessary. But the angle makes it easier to ensure cambium contact. In my eyes it therefor is less prone for mistakes.
I wouldn’t overdue it. But the angles are substantial. E.g. every scion did stick out at the bottom of the grafts hitting the tape. That doesn’t hurt the graft nor the structure. Those techniques are only aplied to young wood. After some years of growth you will barely see a difference to a straight graft.
And thats what I’m now trying to accomplish in every graft to avoid missing the cambium layers. So even when doing a double cleft I would do both sides with a slight angle outward. That way I ensure cambium contact and let more room for the new growth from both scions.
