I grafted most of my peaches today. All of the scion was in good condition except for one that was in a ziplock that was opened in the fridge and it dried out badly. Most scion was large caliper with a few sticks on the small side. I use black tape and a little wax. The rootstock was fully leafed out. I painted them with a 50/50 mixture of elmers school glue and water. I grafted ten trees , three were forked and got two varieties.
I took a screenshot of the ten day forecast
Update of my first batch of peach graft:
grafted on 4/8/2018, temp 35, the next two days lows were 25 26, high is 70 for one day and mostly 40-65
cleft graft, use parafillm and bag to keep moisture
took a peek today ans saw some budding
not sure if itās real take or not, definitely encouraging though
Sweet! You have to be careful with overheating when you bag grafts with plastic, its a good way to fry them. But it may have helped yours since you grafted in such cold weather. If your weather was high 65 low 40 that puts the graft unions around 80F in the sun which is at the upper end of the good temperature window. I would be really surprised if it was cloudy weather after the grafts, with those cold temps I donāt know how they would have calloused - 65F is the bottom of the good callous window.
One other problem with plastic is if you take it off all at once you can dry out the grafts, they need to be first slitted and then a day or two later take them all the way off.
Thanks for the suggestion. I actually will cover with foil when temp hits 75. Hope this is real take,
Wow! I had no idea those varieties were even extant, much less available. Quite a find. Iāve grown Topaz and Loring (removed Topaz last year) but the others I thought long gone.
If you get takes, please report about the peaches in the future.
I donāt recall any of my side grafts on peaches ever working. Not that I ever tried that many, but I did try a few over the years. But if your friend has had positive results on peaches you canāt argue with that.
What he said made sense to me at the time. I guess Iāll find out soon enough. It was probably bad timing but, I have not had great success with cleft grafting peaches.
I would still cover the whole scion with parafilm to prevent dry out.
Tony
I did that on some of the grafts. Some of the scion buds had started to swell and I did not want to knock them off with the tape.
As has been discussed in previous threads, Iām seeing the stage of the rootstock impact grafting success in addition to temperatures. I am grafting peaches, nectarines, and apricots to new rootstocks potted this year and some of last yearās potted rootstocks from failed grafts. The new grafts are kept in the house at a near constant 70 degrees until the graft grows or is clearly failed. I first graft when the rootstocks are pushing new leaves. My grafting efforts on rootstock with green buds to small leaves run about a 70% success rate. If the graft fails, I re-graft later as the rootstock is further out of dormancy and leaves are getting bigger. The percentage of successful takes on these growing rootstocks keeps dropping as the rootstock is further out of dormancy (still growing inside the house), gradually dropping to around 25% takes.
My above observation didnāt take into account the fact that I probably reduced the vigor of my re-grafted rootstocks with the first round of chopping and grafting.
Finished grafting peaches tonight, total of sixteen grafts. I did four tonight, scion was thin and dehydrated.
Jason,
You sure had lots of the red wax from those cheese sticks. Lol.
Tony
Indeed, you must have something with your wine, lol. It is really amazing how far it goes really. I have a ball as big as a tennis ball and havenāt used a third of it grafting this spring. I really like it, easy to work with and stays forever. my grafts from last year still have it on them
Yes, I think vigor of stocks is a very big deal for peaches, more so than other types. Of course it matters to some degree for everything, just more so for peaches. So, any re-graft odds have to be seriously discounted for that reason. I usually donāt even bother with peach re-grafting unless its a topwork on a big stump ā the smaller stocks need a year to heal.
My weak scions on weak (but not transplanted) stocks are still not pushing, I think I have three of them all looking to be failures now. This is compared to everything working on the strong stocks and scions.
Last year I grafted peaches on May 19 when temp was 80 F and sunny. The next few days after that temp was around 70 for 3-4 days. I could not find a note what was the success rate but I would say In the 70-75%.
Today, temp hit 86 F and sunny when I started grafting. It was so hot that parafilm started to stick together. Some grafts I used black Temflex and others itās garden tape. When I was done around 6:30 pm, temp was still around 80F.
Tomorrow Thurs, is supposed to be 84; Fri 81,Sat 74, Sun 64.
Not sure if temp today and tomorrow would be too hot or not. To me, our weather this spring was too cold to graft peach prior to today.
It was 89, 88 (yesterday), with 89 (today) and 82 (tomorrow).
I took a day off and did 13 grafts yesterday, including some peaches. Iām a bit worried that it is too hot, similar to the past temps where I had all failures. But, if stage of growth is the more important factor, then I should do fine. An interesting test. Over the last few days, Iāve done 18 peach grafts, though 7 of them had a couple days of cold before the heat started.
I noticed that my rubber electrical tape wasnāt quite as firm as Iād like.
Two factors:
1.) The warmth makes it stretch more easily.
2.) I ran out of my 1st roll and had to switch rolls for the last few grafts. The first roll wasnāt Temflex, but a different brand (same price, but Lowes didnāt have Temflex). I need to see what the brand is, because I think I like it better. It is one with pink plastic between the layers instead of the thin cloth-like gauze material.
Hereās a pic I made of a cut for the splice graft (plum). I think the small flaps at the end of each piece probably increase the chances of good cambium contact.
Bob,
1 - would love to know what brand of Temflex-like tape you used esp. if itās better and cheaper
- I did all 15 peach/nect cleft grafts yesterday. I have only 3 peach trees that I can graft onto. I could not do spice grafts as I didnāt have a lot of existing branches to compare scion size to. Also, no bark graft yesterday. The bark on my peach trees have not slipped well even with plenty of rain lately. No bark slipping, forget about bark graft. So I had to do cleft on very small scionwood to.
Honestly, with this year weather, I have no confidence if my peach grafting will be much success (at least I would like to blame the weather than the grafter). I grafted apples, pears, plums over a weeks ago. Most of them seem to take well. Peach grafting, not that peachy!!!
Itās not cheaper, but when something is in the $2-3 range, Iām not so worried about price.
I found the spool and it looks like I got it at Home Depot (Lowes didnāt have this kind). It looks like HD replaced Temflex with this at my local store (Temflex is still online), at the exact same price ($2.48). I should go back and get more before they switch again.
ply-122 rubber splicing tape āCommercial Electricā:
Do you mean they take well in general or those you did a week ago? I usually need a couple weeks before I see strong signs of a take and even then Iām not sure for a while.
Iām grafting everything all in parallel this year, so it is a bit chaotic. Iām doing a lot of my pruning at the same time as the grafting. One nice thing about this is I can see where the flowers are (rather than cutting them off without knowing)- there are some young trees with flowers only on a few branches. And Iād really like to sample some of the new pluots/interspecifics this year.