I still have some peach scion wood in the refrigerator. Is it worth using for budding or other type of grafting or should I just discard it?
It may partially depend on crop load, because peaches are active growers throughout summer. So far, my late May grafts are doing fine, but then, my season is a couple weeks later than yours- at least a week, anyway. I picked my first Flavor May peach yesterday- clean as store bought. Most flowers seemed to have been killed, however, by Feb. plummet. It is the only peach or nectarine in my collection where this happened.
It has to get very dry to completely stop peach growth. But it can easily get dry enough to make T budding difficult or impossible. The bark isn’t slipping well enough.
This is an interesting trend, Bob. Here are my results for peach/nectarine grafting in 2017 (this was my first year grafting peaches & nects). Weather-wise, I’m about one month ahead of you.
When looking at your data, I would toss out the 0/6 on newly planted/potted trees. They are much harder to be successful with than established trees.
Once you do that, and roll it up by date:
March: 9/20 = 45%
April: 6/6 = 100%
May: 1/5 = 20%
So, it looks to me that maybe there is a best time to do it, but if you do it a bit early, you can still be reasonably successful. It’s hard to say with such a limited sample size (same issue with my slightly larger data-set).
I have not had time to tally my grafts. Will do it soon. I think I have done well but not as good as last year. I blamed it on the fluctuating weather, not the grafter
The good news is I am 100% on pawpaw (1/0) and persimmon (3/0) this year.
Especially when my relatively large sample size of grafts done May 20th is an aberration to the assumption that early enough to beat summer heat is necessarily better. I haven’t bothered counting my grafts to do this in a scientific manner but I haven’t found more than 3 non-vital grafts. However, some haven’t pushed enough growth yet for me to be confident of their survival, although none of the non-vital grafts ever pushed any growth. Sometimes grafts start to grow and are subsequently hit by OFM, in the case of peaches, and leaf-hoppers and aphids in the case of most other species I graft ( also psyla for pears). These insects need to be controlled when they are prevalent and in my area they always are.
Peaches were difficult for me this year, I blame the weather! May was either cold and wet or scorchy hot, June similar.
Last year I had 90% take, this year was the flip side at 10%.
I will bud graft these in the future…
Peaches and nectarines grafted last year are doing great and will be ready for new homes by next season.
I had some peregrine and indian free this year, did like 6 gtafts of each to american plum. I had about an 80% take initially.
Left for work 2 weeks in az where the weather here went into the 90s and even though wife watered well i am down to 1 single peregrine chip-budded. Everyone else scirched and withered.
Strangely almost all my j plum grafts crapped out too, but nearly all apple, american plum, euro, and persimmon took.
Which graft technique did you do for your peaches that worked? I’m grafting into Lovell root stock and want to maximize my chances of success
Definitely search for peach grafting in the forum search. There are piles of other threads.
To summarize what I’ve read: peaches and nectarines are hard. Late summer budding (T or chip) seems to work better. They callus at higher temps than other fruit.
Ton of answers to your questions.
Here is one of the threads. Scott and Olpea (aka Mark) gave some good advice here.