Peach graft logging spring 2018

[Cafeaulait]

I did peaches during an unfortunate hot spell --into the 90’s and sunny-- but I shaded them with white cloth. I’ll post back later with the dates and weather.

----1 Contender on unknown peach, vigorous (Not-Reliance is my name for it). Sunny spot. Leafed out a bit and then fried.

1 Contender on red-leaved peach rootstock sucker beside vigorous Not-Reliance peach, shaded by foliage: Took and doing well.

----1 Contender bark-grafted on the top of JH Hale. Leafed out a bit, stalled, then fried.

1 White River on high scaffold of same peach: Took and doing well.

The 2nd White River on the opposite scaffold of same peach: Not done a thing, sitting there in its parafilm looking dormant (or dried up, no clue quite yet).

–Edit: I should really mention that my grafting techniques are still inconsistent. These won’t all be great grafting jobs, lol.

[scottfsmith]

Those are good odds given the weather and your experience. I expect the shade cloth was key.

[Derby42]

I grafted on two days a couple of days apart . The first day grafts all had good scion. I got about 50 percent takes. Most interesting to me was that the first five grafts I did that day all took , the last five I did that day all failed. All ten grafts were done within an hour. I assume that I was not as careful to get my cambium lined up on the last five, probably getting tired of being bent over tapping grafts. The grafts I did a couple of days later all failed but the scion was lower quality so I am sure that affected the results.

[Cafeaulait]

I think so, too. The ones that took did so really quickly, too. Anything with little leaves pushing that sat that way at all ended up having the leaves dry up.

Not so with cherries, etc that I grafted earlier in cooler temps, although ones that were still completely stalled at that point dried up too when it got hot.

[Olpea]

I grafted two small sets of peaches (see previous posts for temps)

I think I’m far enough along to evaluate success/failure fairly.

The later grafts only two out of five took.

This wasn’t very good, but my grafting tool broke and I had to use a knife for splice grafts. Additionally this was a really dry period, which I think is as bad as really hot temps.

[Olpea]

The week earlier grafts I got 4 out of 6. These were with the grafting tool and moister ground. They started pushing fairly quickly.

These grafts were all the same variety, both batches. Sentinel peach, I wanted to try.

[mamuang]

Not very good result for me.

Did 24 peach grafts on 5/2/18. Sunny day. Temp was 84.
Temp after thatday
86 sunny
80 partly cloudy
69 partly cloudy
61 sunny
66 cloudy
71 sunny
75 sunny

Results:
12 takes
3 not sure yet
9 not happening

Some I used Temflex, others I used garden tape. No different. All cleft grafts.

Of the failed ones only one scion I know had poor quality (Kaweah - scion forgotten in fridge).
Most disappointing are two Peaches de Vigne and one Teton de Venus not taking.

For me, peach grafting is definitely challenging. With this batch, I also grafted two apricots, one nectarine and one aprium. I meant to say only aprium did not take.

[danzeb]

Only 2 out of 8 peach/nectarine scion grafted 4/26 show green. I examined the failed grafts and the scion was completely dead. They where soaked 24 hrs prior to grafting, completely wrapped in parafin tape or waxed, wrapped tightly with electrical tape and covered with aluminum foil. In a few days I’ll remove them and graft what is left in the fridge. If I have better luck I’ll assume low temperatures were the problem.

[jeremymillrood]

High temps, upper 80’s to 90, high humidity, 80+ % every day and lots of rain…that’s been our weather pattern for the last 2 1/2 to 3 weeks, although we finally caught a break from the rain.

In any case these are some of the grafts I’ve done to my peach seedling of unknown variety.

Silver logan

mid-pride

Fei cheng tao

Kaweah

[Drew51]

I had bad luck this year too with only about 30% taking. I did get some i wanted and lost some I wanted, oh well. Clayton, Foster, Arctic Jay, Old Mixon, Indian Blood, Red Gold, Fantasia, and PF 24C all took and have been growing decent. many started and failed, i thought it was going to be amazing amount of new additions, but this still is a decent amount of new cultivars, all very good . I also added a ton of plums, and Utah Giant sweet cherry. I just stopped grafting yesterday, so I may have a couple more additions or maybe not?
I did three or 4 grafts of each, so i managed to get at least one good one. I had three grafts of Redskin, and one leafed, but all failed. I still had good scion so yesterday I replaced the failed grafts. Some wood went bad or was questionable so i didn’t use it. Most of the wood I got from the west coast. The wood had to be harvested early, the little I decided was OK, and used, all failed. The quality of the wood is everything. I got some harvested a lot later than most from Idaho, and 7 of 8 took. I grafted during flowering here. I’m confident it’s the time to start grafting here. Yes you may get more takes when warmer in other areas, but the age of the wood is a concern here, best graft it early. If in the east graft west coast wood first. On plums I got 4 failures out of dozens, and it was thin, small, west coast wood. Most of the west coast plum wood was fine. It appears peach scion has a shorter shelf life and suggest harvesting as late as possible, certainly not too late though. You want to catch it fully dormant. I’m convinced that it takes so long for ideal conditions here that the scion is compromised. Maybe the fact that most of the wood I get are from higher zones is making it go bad quicker? It’s used to coming out of dormancy when it’s still snowing here. This is the factor that is responsible for having better luck earlier and not meeting the typical take rate in the Northeast, later in the year. Wood from my own zone had 90% takes or more.

[scottfsmith]

Drew I agree that peach scion quality is extremely important but I don’t think its about the zone of origin. This year my best wood by far was one source from California. All of it took, and took off faster than any other. I could tell when I took it out of the bag that it was the best, it looked much more healthy than the other ones. Also I don’t think a couple more weeks in storage will make that much difference; its more about harvesting super max healthy wood and not letting it get too warm or cold in transport.

[Drew51]

Your wood you sent me was very good btw, so your harvest time is very good. Clayton, Foster, and Old Mixon were from you, Old Mixon is 8 inches long already. I forgot to add Carolina Gold to the list of takes. Well good, I will ask for that California wood in a few years! Well unless I move I’m about done with adding more than a couple a year. Next year i should have scion to some blood peaches from Europe, also others from Europe from a guy who brought a bunch over years ago. Anyway looking at these, but can’t fine much if any info.
Sanguine Vineuse
Sanguine d’auvergne

I’m not sure what to think about the zone thing? All I know is no west coast peaches made it here in 4 years of trying. If I take them out of my count I’m above 90% even in peaches. It’s more than one west coast source too.

[scottfsmith]

I’m a bit surprised the Oldmixon Clayton and Foster did so well, those trees did not have a super year last year and the wood was not top. At least it was better than my Red Baron wood - I only had one in 5 take on that. This year it looks like my Red Baron may finally recover from its near death borer experience. Re: the blood peaches hopefully it was a long time ago before plum pox.

Re: west coast maybe you just had bad luck. Most of my peach scion came from the west coast via the CRFG swaps and most of it was excellent. Also Davis is on the west coast, that was my 2nd most common source.

[Drew51]

@scottfsmith

west coast maybe you just had bad luck.

Yeah it very well could be just one of those things.
I also had mulberry and cornus mas wood too. Mulberry took well, not so much the cornus mas, looks like a few takes only. At my cottage, so I can’t go look at it.
Foster I thought all failed, then one started growing, 2 of 3 for Mixon 3 of 3 for Clayton. I had other wood, but also had other sources and not sure whose wood I used? I know these are from you even though I had a 2nd source for Mixon.

[carot]

Hi Drew,

Sanguine Vineuse I saw in this list

http://www.pommiers.com/peche/pecher.htm

If you follow the link there you get some more info, not a whole lot though (it is a nursery). My french is nothing to speak of but maybe that is of some help.

[BobVance]

We’ve got a 10 day stretch of weather in the 70’s (one or two days in the high 60’s), so I decided to make a few more peach grafts. The temps should be perfect, but I’m interested to see how they do given how far into development the trees are.

I’ve been thinking about why my later grafts have done so poorly in the past. Rather than just temperature, it could be that once the fruit has set, the trees are devoting their resources to it, instead of pushing new buds. The week of 70’s should give me a time to test this. Some of the wood is probably starting to get a bit old too, but I choose scions to graft that looked pretty good, rather than trying to focus on optimal varieties (they were at least ones I wanted more of though ).

[danzeb]

@BobVance

We’ve got a 10 day stretch of weather in the 70’s (one or two days in the high 60’s), so I decided to make a few more peach grafts.

I’ll be doing the same thing. My early peach grafts did very poorly. Hoping the weather in the 70’s will work better.

[BobVance]

@danzeb

I’ll be doing the same thing. My early peach grafts did very poorly.

I think my earlier ones did OK (for peaches grafting…maybe 30-50%). I haven’t had time to go around and take proper notes and calculate an actual success rate yet. I did this latest round mostly from curiosity and the opportunity presented by the weather. In the last two days, I made 12 grafts, 5 cleft, 3 splice, and 4 bark grafts (including one double bark).

Edit: Posting this prompted me to record how things did. My guess was decent- it looks like I’ve had about 44% success.

Within this, I looked for where the failures are coming from and found 3 main sources:
1.) One tree (my TangO NJF 16) was only 2/11. I’ve been cutting this one back very hard for a few years trying to graft over it and it has probably affected it’s vigor.
2.) The grafts from 4/30, 5/1, and 5/2 were only 1/11, even though a few days earlier and a week later were both fine. Even if you exclude the NJF tree, it is still 1/9, horrid.
3.) Scion varieties which start with “C” were only 1/11 (2 varieties were 10 of the grafts). Two other varieties were also a combined 0/5.

For the 4/30-5/2 data, even if I exclude the scion varieties which did poorly in general and anything grafted to NJF 16, I still get 1/6, which is much lower than the days around that period.

I think this can be tied back to some very warm weather which came a few days later. The grafts from 4/28 must have had time to callus before the 88F and 90F days, but the grafts from 4/30 onwards did not.

I also took a look at which types of grafts worked best:

But, there is a pretty strong correlation between the type of graft I used and the width of the scionwood. And the width of the wood is often fairly similar when receiving a variety from a source. For instance, if I only got thin wood of variety X, which caused me to do only bark grafts with it, it wouldn’t be surprising if bark grafts get a bad rap due to weak wood from this particular source.

So, if I exclude the varieties which had almost 0% success rate (the best of which was 1/6), the results are:

If you also exclude grafts to NJF 16, it bumps cleft to 100% and Splice rises to match Double bark at 50%. I’m a bit surprised by this result, as when I was making the spice grafts they felt pretty good. I’m going to check on them later in the summer and see if the wider caliper scion is able to put on more growth than the cleft and double-bark grafts. I’ll also take a look at how splice grafts worked for other types of fruit tree.

[BobVance]

@Drew51

Next year i should have scion to some blood peaches from Europe

I should have mentioned that Sanguine Tardive is one of the ones I grafted this year (apparently 3 takes from 3 grafts).

[Drew51]

@BobVance

Sanguine Tardive i

Very cool! I really like the red peaches.