Westchester NY here. Would be interested in chatting with local people who are into grafting. I started 2 years ago and I continue watch videos to better my grafting. I have had good success with Apple. I tried cherry last year for the first time bench grafting. I had only 1 take of 10. I’ve seen that chip and T-budding might be better for stone fruit. If anybody has any advice would be appreciated! I have a small piece of property In the Hudson Valley I’d love to cover with fruit trees! Looking forward to spring time!
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I’m in Putnam County, and if you want to watch how I do it, you are welcome to come by when it warms up enough to graft and I have started doing so. In 10 minutes you will have learned all you need to know to quickly and successfully graft.
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While I don’t currently live in New England, I plan to retire to Hancock County ME at some point. I will be following this thread and will be interested in learning what grows best in that area (obviously I will be planting lingonberry, blueberry and cranberry).
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NY Southern Tier, Chenango County. We have a small orchard/berry patch, along with grafted apple varieties on seedling trees. Will be adding another fenced orchard area in June with 8’ deer fencing. We keep bees. Fully retired 4 1/2 years ago. All my life I’ve wanted a small farm, but kind of hoped for better soils. Anyway I’m having a lot of fun. I lurk on here a lot. I’m more like the kid in the back of the classroom who watches, listens, takes notes and goes out in the field to try putting a lot of your knowledge into practice. Introverts are like that.
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Northern Maine here on the Canadian border. currently grow 60 plus varieties of cold hardy fruit, nuts , veggies and medicinal herbs on 1 acre. still a work in progress. most trees just starting to produce.
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Do you use parafilm? That is the #1 thing to do to improve your take rate.
I like using rubber electric to hold the grafts together, as it will gradually stretch and doesn’t need to be removed, unlike vinyl electrical tape or green garden tape.
A few years ago, I made some pics of doing bark grafts on cherries. I did 10 that year and had 6 takes, so while it worked reasonably, it wasn’t surefire.
Cleft grafts generally work pretty well too and are really my go-to graft in most situations (except when the diameters are too different). The main difference being that the cleft goes across the middle, rather than under the bark, so you can do it even when the bark isn’t slipping.
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Thank you for your response. Yes i do use parafilm, I see your grafts, is it the same to do on rootstock?
I haven’t done that many bench-grafts. Some apples on G65 almost 10 years ago with cleft grafts and a few apple and plum suckers that I yanked out of the ground, grafted and potted. I think almost all of those were cleft grafts as well. If you wanted to do a bark graft, you’d need to plant the rootstock, then wait for it to wake up. Once the bark slips, then you could bark graft it, hopefully without jostling the roots too much. Or wait a year and you’ll have more options and probably a higher take rate. In fact, you could do chip or bud grafts in the summer after planting and then graft over any that don’t take the next spring.
I challenge you to a race- your method against my simple splice where I use a double bladed Italian hand pruner to quickly make my cuts, then tape the scion to the trees shoot I’m working with with electric tape and finally stretching parafilm over it.
I’ve heard of people wrapping scions with parafilm before putting in storage, but I have a fridge full of scion wood by spring and it would take me days to pre-wrap all the wood. Most of it, I never use, but it is useful to have a wide range of diameters to match with any water sprout you choose to graft to.
Yeah, I’ve never done any bench grafting, and I never will. At any given time, if I want a tree of a particular variety, it is quicker just to make a graft on a vertical water sprout of a young tree already vigorously growing and train it to be the new trunk. Being in the business of buying fruit trees wholesale and sizing them up to sell as bearing age trees means I always have such trees to play with. I fully understand buying rootstock to graft for any hobbyist that is trying to keep overall costs down- especially if they want single variety trees.
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Finger Lakes region. Saw a sun dog this AM.
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Why are you bothering with the parafilm once the electric tape is on.
Please make a video or take some photos to demonstrate your technique. It sounds efficient and simple, aside from finding the type of pruner you have.
Champlain Valley, Vt . Flipping back and forth between mud and below zero here.
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Probably. I used to live in Oswego, NY, next to Lake Ontario. Lake Champlain isn’t as big, but it does help buffer the winter,same as the Finger Lakes area
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I try not to race when holding sharp objects 
I’ve got enough trouble avoiding cutting myself when doing it slowly. Which I suppose is one of the benefits of your method with the pruners.
I’ve tried using the splice graft that you do (I think) and while it often works, I have trouble holding it in just the proper position. That’s one of the things I like about the cleft graft- the cleft holds the wedge in place pretty well. Often well enough that it doesn’t move if I take my hands away to get the tape of do something for a minute, though that does depend on the width of the scion.
I do like the splice graft for very thick scions, as I can get the angle correct, have plenty of cambium, and still get enough structural integrity in the union.
For very thin scions, I prefer bark grafts, as the thin scion slips easily into the narrow gap and would be difficult to structurally connect in a splice or cleft.
For everything in between, I generally do cleft grafts, though I’ve played around with the others.
While speed is nice, I am more concerned about optimizing success, at least within the skills that I have.
One way that I save time (at least springtime time) is pre-parafilming. I don’t bother for apples or pears, things that 95% success is expected anyway. And for jujubes I only do the ones where I particularly value the variety and know there is a good chance I’ll use it all. But for fruit like peaches or persimmons, where the grafting is done later in the season and the results are less certain, I think pre-wrapping helps preserve the wood.
I tested with some persimmon wood last spring, putting both pre-wrapped and bare from the same source in the same bag and the pre-wrapped came out in much better condition.
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I’m in the Mid-Hudson Valley, NY on a small urban/suburban plot. I’ve followed the posts of many of you here when I was selecting varieties to plant. Thanks for all the great info!
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It took me a few minutes to find it, but here is the data I posted last year in late May on success vs scion diameter:
Note that “medium-large” with the best success rate is just a tad under the width of a pencil (5mm vs 6-7mm).
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Want out for a Valentines breakfast at a diner that was my first visit. Noticed 60ft grape vine arbor in the parking lot. Sat next to a window and noticed fig trees, about 8 ft high with no winter protection. Waitress said they grow fine there. Later I saw there were about 20 of them. Low this winter was 6f and somethings it goes to 0f. Anyone growing their figs in the region that don’t die down to ground when not protected.
Here’s a photo from the window.
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Zone 6a Marblehead Ma. (formerly from Syr NY, so I feel like this group was made for me!)
I spent all weekend trying not to prune. It was in the 50s. Now, it is in the 20’s with fresh snow. Things look really good on my trees. I hope for lots of flowers this spring.
Dave Wilson combo trees: Cherry, Pluots, peach and apricot
Espalier: Apple, Pear
More Cherries.
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Electric tape holds the scion to the shoot, parafilm covers the scion outside of the electric tape, which buds can’t possibly push through.
Splice graft. Splice Graft