Go dormant? We’re pretty brutal, we just cut green branches and strip the leaves off and put it in the refrigerator. They stay dormant until about three weeks after they come out of the refrigerator, long enough for the DHL flight/van ride/boda boda trip to where they are grafted and planted (no callusing is needed). It also works fine just cutting green branches off in Africa and grafting them directly onto green or dormant rootstocks.
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Wow, Apples are very forgiving when it comes to grafting. I planted benchgrafts in the nursery this spring then had the temps drop down to 20f and the are doing great.
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Yeah, apples are pretty sympathetic; if a graft doesn’t take, usually it’s a problem with the root (like root rot) rather than the graft of the scion.
True. It’s also a lot easier to accidentally knock off a peach or apricot bud than it is an apple bud. To me, a fairly clumsy grafter, it is a reason to have extras, at least with stonefruit. With apple/pear I have extras mostly because it is more comfortable and I have enough wood… 
When grafting we work with long scions and cut them off to one bud after taping.
Do you not use parafilm? Or do you put it on after grafting? I normally put parafilm on the scion before grafting it, rather than trying to apply it after it is grafted.
We tape the graft with vinyl tape, then wrap the scion and the graft with parafilm. The tropic sun is too hot for parafilm or grafting rubbers alone, they split within a couple days. We have to go back and slit the vinyl tape in a few weeks.
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