I have not checked for roots yet. I don’t wan to mess with the bags for a full month. I’ve just bee looking for bud swell. I kept all of my buds above the medium so I can check them just looking trough the bag.
You are right that there may be several differences between the groups. The first group did not have root radicles, but they are nuts I cold stratified myself and I know they had enough time. The second group all had root radicles. I think the biggest risk is compatibility between Seguinii scions with Dunstan nuts. The other difference between groups is the first group has relatively large nuts with about 1/8th inch scions and the second group has small nuts with larger scions.
It will be a fun experiment whether it works or not. At least one of the first batch has put up a small diameter shoot. It is now an inch and a half tall. I’m presuming that nut has rooted or close to it. That nut had the same amount of cold stratification as the rest, so maybe roots are forming on the others.
Here is what happens when you split the nut when inserting the scion. The petioles root as usual, and the split nut partly opens up. The insertion point has callous between each cotyledon and the scion, so doesn’t open at that point. The little guy is in our woods now and 15 feet tall, so don’t worry too much over a split nut.
Wah Hoo! I think so too. It’s at the right location and angle for growth. Roots will show up against the sides of the plastic soon too, quite noticeable soon.
No more of the seguin or Chinese chestnuts I planted have shown top growth, but the ones that have are doing well. Three are seguins and one is Chinese:
Well, it has been a full month since I did the first set of Seguin to Dunstan nut grafts. So, I decided to take them out of the plastic bags and put them in 18s and the tray in my mister. Even though the second set won’t be in the bags a month until the 24th, I decided to move them all at once.
Of the 18 only one looks like it had a chance of success:
It has roots and a green bud. One had no roots and mold and the nut was soft. I culled that one. All of the other nuts in the first batch had roots. Two of them had no green buds and had put of top growth. Those will be Dunstans if I don’t cull them later. The rest in the first batch had roots with no green buds yet.
In the second group none had green buds and none had put up any shoots. Most had roots. A few had no roots yet but the nuts were solid and showed no signs of mold.
There is some good and bad news for my seguins. The nut grafting does not look promising. The one that had the green bud is not dead yet, but nothing else is showing any signs of life. The good news is with the seedlings. I scraped a little medium off the cell with the 4th seguin that had not shown top growth yet. I could see a tap root, so I’m not counting it out yet.
I decided to do an early transplant of the largest seguin seedling. As you can see, the tap root is pruned but there is very few lateral roots yet:
I’m going to let the nut grafts in the mister stay for another week or so, but I think the nut grafting is a failure. The one with the green bud has now turned brown. I’m sure some failed because of poor technique, but I’m guessing incompatibility between Seguins and Dustan was a big factor as well.
On the up side, the 3 seguin seedlings are doing very well!
The three in the back are the transplanted seedlings. The tree in the 3 gal in the front is a seguin seedling I grew from a nut last winter. The reason I put seguin in quotes for the seedlings in the back is that I’m now having second thoughts.
I’ve only had success growing seguins from nuts one time and that was last winter. I then got some disease that killed all of the seedlings except the one in the 3 gal container in the picture above as well as the parent trees.
When I received the nuts this year, there were two bags with 4 nuts each. One bag was Chinese and the other seguins according to the kind gentleman who sent them to me. I’m now wondering if I got them mixed up. Only one that I marked Chinese has germinated and 3 of the 4 I marked Seguin germinated. I was amazed at the great growth of the ones marked seguin compared to the ones I grew the previous year. I’m now thinking I got the nuts mixed up and only one is a seguin. It has tiny leaves. At first, I presumed it was some mold issue or the medium was too wet for too long that caused it. I’m now thinking it might actually be the Seguin!
When I look at the leaves on this and the new leaves starting on the seguin from last year, I’m beginning to believe I have 3 nice Chinese and 1 little Seguin.
I’m completely new to grafting of any kind, but ended up deciding to try using nut grafting this winter when I was able to get scionwood of some chestnut varieties I don’t have any trees of, so I’ve enjoyed reading this thread a lot, thank you for all the information.
I followed the process Carl Mayfield specified in his nutgrafting document and the YouTube video of his nut grafting workshop, and while it’s only been 9 days since I did my grafting I have noticed that while they are hard to see through the condensation on the bags, some of my buds definitely appear to have already begun swelling and some have even already turned green. Is this normal? It seems much quicker than I was expecting.
Also does this mean the nuts are definitely growing roots and my nuts now have a good probability of success, or is this one of those situations similar to what happened when I tried to root dormant blueberry cuttings last year and the buds opened and leaved out but many of the cuttings still failed to grow roots and ended up dying?
I believe Carl recommended opening the bags and repotting the nuts individually once the buds began to swell, but I’m worried it’s still too early for that given it’s only been 9 days, so I’d appreciate any advice anyone might have.
For reference, I have grafted 15 pieces of Gillet and Bergantz scionwood onto some pretty small Marrisard and Colossal nuts. Pretty much all the buds I can see seem to look pretty good, but the Gillet buds definitely seem to be progressing faster than the Bergantz and are clearly already green and growing in length.
A couple of days ago I had another batch of nuts that had sprouted enough to be ready to be grafted, so I also grafted Okei scionwood and some more Bergantz scionwood onto Colossal and Bouche de Betizac nuts, but it’s obviously too early to know about those yet.
Only three of them are really visible in the pics, but here are a couple of pics showing side and overhead views of one of the bags containing Gillet grafts. I came across a presentation online a couple of months ago that stated Gillet grafts onto everything, and based on what I’ve seen so far I’m inclined to agree!
