In terms of temperatures, there was a thread where there were a lot of people testing how warm it needs to be to graft peaches.
Personally, I have better results in spring grafting waiting for temps to get pretty warm. I prefer 80 degree highs. But, I also am able to preserve the scionwood pretty well. I keep it right at freezing, then warm the wood up about once a month or so for a couple hours, to melt the ice in the bag, then put it back to 32F.
The wood tends to be in very good shape when I pull it out to graft. So the bud wood really isn’t old when it’s pulled out later in the spring.
My best results are fall budding. Large nurseries bud peaches, they don’t use spring grafts with dormant scionwood. They either use newly grown greenwood buds in spring grafting for southern nurseries, or fall budwood from current season growth. I’ve only had poor success one time fall budding, when a couple years ago I budded several plum rootstocks to peach and had mass failures. The rootstocks were too large and the bark wasn’t slipping. It was too big a rootstock for budding and too dry. Other than that I’ve had good results with fall budding. I’ve budded about peach 100 trees/year on average for over a decade.
It’s extremely rare for peaches to have large sections of shoots with just flowers. In fact singlet flower buds are much more rare on peach shoots than double or triplet flower/leaf buds. It is possible to just have flower buds, if one is only using a two bud stretch of peach shoot for a grafting, but the flower buds should still push, just like leaf buds.
I’ve done my share of chip budding peaches, but T-budding works better. Large commercial nurseries all use the T-bud methods vs. chip budding.
The context suggests the question is about peaches. If there are buds on the peach wood, it is one year old wood. Two year old peach wood won’t have any buds on it. Buds only form on one year wood for peaches.
The thing about grafting/budding is that there are dozens of ways to do it. And one person who has success with their way, naturally tend to think they have the secret sauce. But there are lots of ways to be successful grafting/budding.
If one is just starting out, I would suggest mimicking people who have lots of experience and lots of success. Of the posts above, I think Scott and Annie (IL847) would best fit the bill of well experienced and very successful. That will help your initial success, via mimicking their technique. Then you can branch out and try different techniques which may work best for your needs.
Also look at methods commercial fruit nurseries use, since they have a strong economic incentive to have successful graft/budding techniques. Of the dozen or more nurseries I’ve bought peach tree from in the past, I don’t think I’ve ever bought a peach from a nursery which spring grafts with dormant wood.
Not saying that grafting dormant wood in the spring is a bad idea, I’ve used that technique a lot. But the best results are from spring budding (for southern nurseries) and fall budding (for more northern nurseries).