My Orchard Projects

My primary reason for using the interstem is to slow the overall tree growth and aid in keeping the tree to a manageable size. I don’t think many people use the interstem. The interstem would be a big problem if it was incompatible with either the root or scion.

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I haven’t directly grafted from callery to asian. Clark might be able to help with that question.

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Good to know that it makes the growth rate slower or faster depending on the choice of interstem. I am kind of blown away by all if this as it seems kike it can get a bit complicated but at the same time can be simple :+1:

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I have not seen any comparability issues on the few perry pears and Euro fresh market pears I grafted on Callery.

I prefer colonial Pear rootstock because I know exactly what it will do and seems to produce bearing trees faster than Callery. Wild Callery rootstock is widely diverse in vigor. I would only chose Callery if I was trying to grow a tree in an area subject to flooding, drought or if there were wild pears growing that I could graft over. I hear it is often used in the south as a rootstock where they have extreme Fireblight pressure.

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Thanks for replying. I am hoping I can top work these 2 and will look for more. There vigor is pretty good because I was mowing this as a field just 6 or 7 years ago. It just became more work than what it was worth at the time and I started out mowing around small trees that came up and sort of just let it go after that. Only maintaining a few paths in it. I am gonna try to reclaim this if i can use it for fruit trees though :+1:

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When top working would it be best to prune the tree heavy now before it has broken bud or wait til time to graft? Or does it even matter?

I am watching a YouTube video on top working a pear.

EDIT Nevermind :man_facepalming: he went straight into grafting after pruning it :+1:

I have grafted several different varieties of asian to callery without any compatibility issues.

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Thank you very much for that reply @mvfd801 :+1: I am not sure what I will try to graft to these 2 but I am going to try for a couple varieties on each and want to make sure what my options are before starting!

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Well I went to a few places yesterday evening and also ended up at Lowe’s … I bought a couple grapevines. A Red Flame Seedless and a Thompson Seedless. I am thinking of putting these close to the house by my Concord Seedless. Anyone have any thoughts on how the Red Flames taste? I have eaten plenty of Thompson Seedless and if they taste similar to store bought (hopefully better from my own vines) then I should be pretty happy with them.

I also went on advice here and bought some Immunox Fungicide for Black Rot as I do lose some every year to that and I hope to save as many grapes as I can :+1:

Concord seedless is highly resistant to black rot, its usually not seedless unless your weather is perfect. Concord seedless i grow here spray free now and i had black rot for years. I cured it up using cultural practices and immunox and captan mixed and used evefy 2 weeks. I pruned the grapes down to the main trunk and a few uninfected branches and sprayed frequently for 2 years after which there was never blackrot
Some grapes such as red canadice attract black rot. I actually received a red canadicd plant from a nursery that showed the brown dots on the leaves within a day of planting. I thought i would lose my battle with blackrot but chuckle now looking back on it. Thompson grape is a zone 7 grape which is not hardy in many areas and i suspect it will die in winter there. I know nothing of the other grape.

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I am hoping that I can rid myself of the Black Rot after a couple years of spraying as well. I have never had the weather for Concord seedless to ever be seedless either :man_shrugging: I pruned heavy this year and am hoping that with spraying it will way improve my grapes. Canadice and Himrod have always had a problem getting started here for some reason. Going to move 1 each of those to a different spot this year and see if they do any better. I also have some Niagara grapes that the rabbits love to clip off every time they get to growing. Catawba is back and forth as well with me and I have some Black rot on those as well. Hoping a good spray scheldule will alleviate it this year for me and I will only have to spray for a couple years before it is gone. I am going to try the Thompson seedless and see how it will go. Hoping it and the Red Flame both do well but you just never know.

I got home from work a little early and went and picked another load of mulch up from my father in laws. As I was leaving I took a pick of a couple of his Key Apples. These apples are 15 years old and must be a natural semi dwarf because none of them are over 10 or 12 feet tall. It actually might even be considered a dwarf…?

After getting the mulch I came home and spread some of it around my grapes up by the house and around my black raspberries. I still have a couple wheelbarrows of mulch left and unloaded it behind my house to use elsewhere. I am planning on moving one of my Himrod grapes and a Canadice grape up to the trellises up in the orchard and planting the Red Flame and Thompson at the trellis by the house and see how they do. They can’t do any worse than the others have done and maybe by moving them up to the orchard they might actually do better there themselves. At least that is my hope. There will still be a 1 each of Himrod and Canadice left by the house.

This evening I decided to move a couple of my grape vines (a Canadice and a Himrod) from the grape trellises that are by my house and relpcate them to the Orchard trellis system. I dug them out and replaced them with a Red Flame and Thompson Seedless. There is still one each of the other 2 there but I wanted to try and see how these would do there and if moving the other 2 would encourage more and better growth. I mixed in composted manure with all 4 of them and added a little blood meal to them as well as scattered some around some of my other grapes as well. I hope this encourages some growth from all of them and even of it affects grape production, I will have stronger vines for the next season :+1: at least that is the hope…

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No grafting here today. So I decided it was a perfect day to make some tags up for some of my stuff :+1:

I have an old ballpeen hammer.that I have had since I was a small child (yes people use to give small children hammers :joy: ) some letter stamps that I have had for many years and some cheap soft metal tags on the cheap from the bay of E.

I took some rust resistant tie wire and put several of them on but then it started raining again so I came inside. I am pleased with the way they turned out and I still have several more to make. I was just going to write on them the names vut thankfully remembered my stamp set.

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I have the first signs of life from those those 2 cuttings from that black sweet cherry tree that I stuck in some pots!

I have then in a spot inside that house that doesn’t get overly hot but stays a consistent temperature. It is dark in there and I have zip top bags over both of them. I took the bags off for sake of the pics. So hoping this works! When do I need to take the bags off? Also when do I need to put these outside? Thinking late spring but would love to hear what thoughts are on that from you guys…

The only reason I noticed this is I was checking to see if they needed water.

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Those dies and labels are cool, that’s a good idea for marking plants and trees. I can still remember what’s growing where, but ought to mark them anyway.

I use to stamp all of my tools for work with my name or initials. I have had that set for around 18 years! It was the plan to write the names on those tags but when I saw those, I thought it would look much nicer than my barely legible handwriting :rofl: I know where everything is right now but when I start grafting multiple varieties I know that I will forget what is what :man_facepalming: :grin:

Yeah, it may be a good idea to get a set like that if I do a lot of grafting. I do have 6 apples I grafted in pots that have those yellow plastic strips on them that at one time had the variety written on it that has since wore off. Thankfully I still know what’s what, but will need to ID them before they get planted. Someone on here had an idea of cutting up a few pop cans in strips and using a hard metal tipped pin to write the variety on the strips.

Those were ordered from Sears but I have a couple different sizes of them that I got from Harbor Freight :+1: they are of very good quality as well and would definitely work on the soft metal tags. Much cheaper from there as well. I bought those many years ago as well and they may not even have them there either… never hurt to look though.

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I got the idea for the tags here and the aluminum strips would have been great as well. I have a carbide tipped scriber that we make marks in concrete with that I had planned on using if I was hand writing them but this was much easier and a much cleaner look for me :+1: