Peach graft results

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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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 :grin:

The good news is I am 100% on pawpaw (1/0) and persimmon (3/0) this year.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 :slightly_smiling_face:

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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.

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Ton of answers to your questions.

Here is one of the threads. Scott and Olpea (aka Mark) gave some good advice here.

Grafting peaches - #12 by scottfsmith.

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