I shouldn’t have replied to this because I haven’t done it but I think LOL if your bench grafting you should be grafting now and then putting your grafted root stocks in damp wood chips or sawdust in a cool dark place🙂
My rootstocks were delivered this week. I am going to graft this week, and place the rootstock/scions combos into moist sawdust and put in a cool room in my house. I want the graft union to start healing up before I put them outside. Ill give them about 2-3 weeks, and then move them outside into a nursery bed. I’ve done this before and it has worked well for me. I want them outside in 3-4 weeks, an awake, when the rest of our vegetation starts to wake up.
I should mention this is for apples only. Everything else will wait til it warms up outside.
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Just curious what apple and peach rootstocks everyone prefers, I’m pretty much center of long island with mostly high organic soil but have a few veins of seriously sticky clay. I order 5 Antonovka, 5 m26 and 10 b9 this year, hope I’m not too far off.
Very helpful thank you!
I like the Geneva series. I have trees on m26, m7, and bud 9, but most of my trees are on g41, g890, and g969. I am grafting another 50 trees onto g969 this year.
I have lots of clay, and all rootstocks seem to do ok so far.
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This worked for me last year
M26 has been best here, for a semi-dwarf tree, but I’ve not bought a grafted tree or rootstock in 25 years… newer ones that have come on the market since then may be much better.
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Are any of you worried about tonight’s temps going down to the teens? My peach buds are concerned.
still 4ft. of snow here so nope!
Tug hill?
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Down here it’s a problem. If all I lose is cots and J. plums I’m OK with it.
I’m still plenty dormant here, so the cold temps aren’t an issue here.
Between two of the Finger Lakes, I think we’ll be fine. One apricot tree is further along than any other tree in the orchard, and I think it isn’t too far along.
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Alan, are you expecting to lose all of them? I don’t think mine are far enough along to be a complete loss.
Most of my apricots look like this, which I think is called “Calyx Red”. One of them has the slightest hint of white. We could get just under the 10% kill of 22F a few times, but not close to the 90% kill of 9F.
I’m not sure exactly where the Japanese plums and pluots would fall on the freeze damage charts. Most of the ones I’ve seen only have Euro plums, which could have different thresholds. I’m not sure if this qualifies as “tight cluster” or “first white”. I suspect I’ll get some thinning and could end up with a sparse fruit-load.
I could also get a bit of thinning on some of the Asian pears, but I don’t think it will be too bad.
I made sure to turn off the heat pumps last night (oil backup), as they pull warmth into the house and exhaust cold air. That cold air can then run downhill across the driveway and through some of the trees (particularly pluots). It might only be a few degrees, but there is no sense in being the straw which breaks this years harvest.
Current forecast has 19F, 21F, and 25F for my town. I’ve got some apricots in neighboring towns (figured I’d try at some other sites, given the high apricot mortality level I’ve seen) as well, which forecast 21F, 21F, and 25F. The trees in other towns are only 2nd year, but all seem to have at least a few flowers and are decent sized for second year trees (good trees from ACN and Granpa’s Orchard which grew well last year).
Everything is quite dormant here still. We were down to snow leftover from plowing and snow in parts of the woods. Just a couple inches this a.m. but a low of 7F.
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In a couple of days cut some flowers open and see if there is browning on the interior. The chart is the chart but when the flowers show brown they are toast.
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I’m looking at 18 here tonight, despite my best attempts to will the forecast higher. My peach tree has a lot of buds that are a bit past swollen bud stage, so I’m thinking it will thin the buds mostly. Surprisingly, my apricots are not as far along. There’s a couple of buds at calyx red on one branch, but the rest are just starting to swell. I’ll see what happens.
Correction: the forecast is now for 17 degrees. It’s a good thing we usually run 3-4 degrees warmer than forecast at my spot.
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This is one of the advantages of living/growing near the mighty Atlantic. This is a mix of barnyard waste and seafood/seaweed compost, delivered by a local today (you can see the bits of clam and lobster shell). Provides many missing micronutrients to the orchard/garden.
Anyone else taking advantage of the fishing/seafood industry in our region?
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if the gas wasnt so high id drive down your way to get some of that. what they get per yard for it?
The price has gone up a bit this year (as has everything) but I paid $50 a yard delivered.
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