Whip and tongue has always been my go to. Seems to have the best success rates IMHO. But I’d love to hear others inputs.
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I taught myself how to graft and failed my first few attempts. Then I got lucky and tried a simple splice graft (I didn’t know what it was called or whether it had been tried before and just logically tried it as an experiment). I knew I had to join cambium to cambium and that the graft wood should have shoots growing in the same direction they were in before they were removed from the mother tree.
I hadn’t heard of using electric tape either- that was just another part of my experiment.
These were not amazing ideas, just common sense deductions combined with quite a bit of luck. It turned out I was re-inventing the wheel, but this was all before you-tube and search engines.
I’ve never tried anything but splice and cleft grafts, and splice is much quicker and, based on what I now know, the easiest of all grafts.
If you take a class on grafting and this method isn’t taught, I suspect the teacher is enjoying showing off grafting skills at the expense of teaching you the best way for a beginner to perform grafts of most tree species- at least all the fruit species I grow, except maybe persimmons.
Learning to graft can be hard or easy. Depends on how you go about it.
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Beginners need success and the easiest methods in my opinion should be taught first. I only used whip grafts for a long time until I realized how much easier/faster it was to do cleft grafting. I do other type grafts when appropriate but most of my grafts are cleft or splice.
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These days I rarely do clefts- I only use them when I need to put a graft where there are no one year shoots. They take 3 times as long for me to do than a splice.
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To me that Bark graft is the quickest to do. I don’t have to line up the cambium layer. Just cut the Scion at an angle of 1 1/2 or 2 inches long and pushed it through the bark and taped it or parafilm it and done in less than a minute.
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Tony,
With Bark graft, it can’t be done if bark is not slipping, though.
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Yes, it is the quickest to do when the understock leafed out and the bark is slipping in early spring and not for bench graft.
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I just taught myself, On clefts I rock the knife back and forth, makes 1/2 inch cuts for as far as you want to go. hardly any chance to cut yourself as you only cut one side at a time. Otherwise I’m not sure how you could control the depth of the cut? I just figured that out by doing. The school of hard knocks is the best school if you ask me. This will be my fifth year grafting. last year was amazing as I had the most success. My take percentage keeps going up with practice. Yeah some of the grafts grew a couple feet, so guess they are good!
I don’t plan to ever graft that much so the simple grafts are fine with me. I will always do a few each year, but only a few.
Last year I added 8 peaches or nectarines, 9 plums, 7 mulberries, 5 dogwood cherries, and 1 sweet cherry… My trees are full now. I will probably do some back up grafts and such, and grafts to small seedlings. I could use more sweet cherry, so will be asking for those, and a few plums and peaches I would like to try. Not many.
But I say whatever you have to do to learn, classes, videos, and practice, get’er done! Fun to do!
The reason I failed many times had nothing to do with technique. I was grafting too late in the year. Once I talked to locals as to when to graft, I started getting more and more takes.
I was following advice from people in other zones and when they graft, and also the experts at universities, but the locals set me straight as to when and they were right.
“All gardening is local” - Fred Hoffman
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In most cases, I found much more important than graft technique is graft pre and post care.
If grafting apples, pear or plum pretty much any technique works to get a graft going. But if you don’t provide a bird perch, some bird is going to break it.
With figs I found that I had to let the root stock sap bleed out for a day or more or the graft point would often be flooded.
Wrapping with rubber strips and parafilm will not cause girdling even if you leave it on for over a year. I’ve seen nasty girdled branches that were done with electrical tape and not cut in time.
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I also only do splice and cleft grafts. Mainly cleft. My issue with splice is I can’t see cambium meeting cambium. But I like how clean it heals. I always have greater success with cleft but graft union turns out bulky and ugly. But I guess still it’s fine since sometimes I have 4+ feet of growth same year as grafting.
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Me too. But a cleft can be handy (put two or more scions on one graft, for example, or when you’re working at a bad angle and can use the cleft to help hold the scion in place until you get the wrap started). I sometimes want to graft a pencil-size scion to a thumb-size branch and a cleft just seems logical there. But I do just about all my grafting in established trees.
I’ve gotten some really gnarly grafts with whip and tongue, caused by shoving the two pieces together too far.
Lest we leave the subject too soon, don’t forget chipping. It makes great use of scion wood, is quick and easy, almost never fails, and can be done any time.
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I’ve only been grafting a couple of years so I don’t know how those bulky ugly graft unions hold up overtime. What has your experience been?
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I prefer the ugly graft as I can tell where it is! Less chance of me pruning it off.
I have little long term experience, but a few look less ugly and harder to see every year.
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Many of my grafts are comprised of several scions at the same time. When multi scions are joined the cleft graft has been stronger and more reliable. Example. M111root/bud9/desired apple variety. Example Bud9/winter banana/desired pear variety.
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As a new grafter I’ve used a variety of grafts and a good percentage of them have taken but I don’t seem to get good growth. I’m wondering if I’m wrapping the tape too tight. I have been using the stretchy stick to itself tape. It does perish in time. I have bought several trees that have been wrapped with masking tape and they seem to grow very well. So, will it limit growth if I wrap too tightly?
Never been an issue- they’ve always held up just fine
.[quote=“k8tpayaso, post:56, topic:15776, full:true”]
As a new grafter I’ve used a variety of grafts and a good percentage of them have taken but I don’t seem to get good growth. I’m wondering if I’m wrapping the tape too tight. I have been using the stretchy stick to itself tape. It does perish in time. I have bought several trees that have been wrapped with masking tape and they seem to grow very well. So, will it limit growth if I wrap too tightly?
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I’ve had that problem too, and yes, I do think it is possible to wrap them too tight. At least, I’m pretty sure I did it one year using grafting rubbers really, really tight! But I don’t think you could do it with parafilm, and I’m doubtful that you could do it with Temflex. But I don’t know that it’s the cause of sluggish growth; I know that sometimes some of my grafts seem to take just fine but don’t take off very well. Sometimes I think that it’s because I’ve located the new graft too low on the tree and it has too much suppression from auxin higher up in the tree, or perhaps too much competition. But some varieties just don’t seem to get along with my tree, notably Macoun. Go figure …
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Ugly, highly calloused grafts usually heal up fine. Most eventually disappear if you don’t paint them every other year.
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I think poor growth could be any number of things but they all probably funnel into either not enough cambium conact/fusing, not enough root, drying too much/too fast inhibiting scion growth, or constriction/other factors
I have never seen constriction issues but use parafilm. It also helps w scion dessication if wrapped over entire scion. I also loathe clefts; i use them, often, but whip-and-tongue do way, WAY better for me all things being equal, and i am less solid w bark grafts but again if they take they tend to out-perform clefts significantly.
Like i said i certainly DO clefts…but i think while very effective including with mismatched scion/rootstock and with new grafters, but all things equal they are a pretty crude union. In the same vein i am a parafilm guy; never used rubbers (ignores how that sounds) and never used tape, but love parafilm and have used tar seals, esp. with clefts.
Kate (apologies if your name really is k8, like tekashi69 ;-). ) have you used wrapped or painted (tar diluted, latex, etc) scionwood, and/or, if an option, shading grafts? That would be another issue: i live way in wisconsin and still, when possible, do all bench grafts and tuck them along the n side of the house a month or 3 as they adapt, instead of tossing them into the sun to bake
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I’ve also kept a lot of mine in a semi to full shaded area. Most of the ones that I have been disappointed in the growth have been those grafts placed on trees. And I am basically a novice grafter. I have learned that setting a graft on a bare tree limb does not always assure that it gets optimal light when that tree has leafed out. That may well be part of the problem.
And yes, it is Kate, or Katy, or can be many other things! 
Anyone heard of any grafting classes coming up in St. Paul area or western Wisconsin this spring? I’ve been grafting for four years, but lots of room for improvement.