It is a bit tricky to store. I have a “dorm fridge” I use pretty much exclusively to store scionwood. I hardly ever open it, and it’s in the basement, so it doesn’t use a lot of electricity. I keep it right at 32F where it barely freezes the scionwood.
I generally cut the scionwood in early February here. I try to cut it on a decently warm day when the sun is out and the sap is flowing. I stick it in a cooler with ice and put it in the fridge as soon as I get home.
Since the wood is frozen, it can get freezer burn (i.e. dry out) if allowed to stay frozen too long. That’s why I take it out of the fridge and warm it for an hour or so at room temperature every month or month and a half. Then it goes straight back in the fridge to be frozen at 32F again.
I tried storing peach wood in our regular food fridge, but it just never worked very well for me. It would always seem to start bud swell in the fridge (or even push green growth). But allowing the peach wood to barely freeze, keeps the buds very dormant and the peach wood in very good shape for a long time.
I’ve even had good luck with this method in the few times I’ve received wood from others, with two exceptions.
One was when I didn’t have a lot of experience grafting or storing wood and Scott sent me some scionwood of a peach cultivar I couldn’t find anywhere else.
That was a waste of his time and mine because I really didn’t know what I was doing. After that failure, I really didn’t think I could have much success grafting dormant peach wood at the time.
So I asked Scott if he would send me green wood express shipping, if I paid the expensive shipping, to which he agreed (btw, thanks Scott for all your generosity to me over the years) That worked, and I was able to get the cultivar growing on my trees. I’m pretty certain that variety was Clayton, which I’m still growing. I just looked on my orchard map and currently have 14 trees of it.
Over the years Scott has sent me Early Crawford, Rochester, and Oldmixon Free. Early Crawford and Rochester weren’t good enough for me to keep (i.e. not good for selling) but I still have Oldmixon Free (currently two trees).
I don’t know how Scott gets all these unobtainable varieties. Maybe through the Davis repository?
Since then, I don’t graft green wood (except for making copies of my own peach trees via fall budding). On the rare occasion I request scion wood for a variety I can’t obtain anywere else, I request dormant peach wood. The only other time it has failed me is when a member unintentionally sent me dead wood, dead on arrival.
The member sent me some live dormant wood the next year and it successfully grafted.
When I have to get peach dormant scionwood in the mail. I always graft it to some shoots on a mature peach tree. It just seems like the grafts are almost 100% on a mature peach tree, vs. grafting to a young peach seedling. Since the goal is to get the variety on my property (again these are varieties I can’t get anywhere else) I try to do everything possible to make sure it’s a success.
Another thing I do is use this grafting tool. I’m not good with making grafting cuts with a knife. I can barely sharpen a knife, unless I use a profiler sharpener. It seems to take some artistic talent, to which I have none. So I use machines to fill in where I lack artistry.
Here is a thread on the grafting tool I use. It has some issues, but there are some good hacks in this thread for repair.
Once I have the variety on site, I can easily make copies of it, via fall budding.
However, two of the last three times I’ve gotten some dormant peach scionwood in the mail, the grafts took to mature peach trees, but the whole trees died for no apparent reason. Sometimes that happens, when you have 700 peach trees. But it did seem weird that those trees died for no apparent reason, when they had scions grafted to them.