I made quite a few grafts this spring and almost all sprouted, and many were looking very good. I used a modified Osborn technique, slitting the rootstock bark rather than making a strap, wrapped with rubber bands and parafilm. All of the grafts look like they calloused.
But recently many of them have died – even some large ones. There have been some insects nibbling but this looks like more of a disease, or the rootstock rejecting the graft.
Any thoughts?
It looks like the stock is rejecting the graft. Some persimmon stocks are highly prone to that. I have one virginiana rootstock I have been trying to graft to for three years now, nothing is sticking.
I assume you rubbed off all the competing growth, any competition can cause failure. Also if you do a multi-graft one successful one can cause others to fail. Or not, sometimes I have had great success with many scions on the same stock all doing well.
My stock is growing back now, I will probably try some buds here on it soon. I have had more consistent results with persimmon summer budding.
That makes a lot of sense Scott. I’m grafting onto some volunteers that grew from trees I had planted years ago. A couple may have been kakis, but I assume most are virginiana.
Yes, I’ve been religious about rubbing off buds on the rootstock daily.
I’ve never tried budding. Do you have a favorite source for how to do it on persimmon?
Hi Scott,
Thanks to your advice on optimum temps for persimmon grafting, my D Virginiana rootstock after a number of failed attempts, finally appears to be growing my graft.
On 5/29: Temps were expected to be in mid 70 s this week so I completed all outdoor persimmon grafts. Like you I have tried this older rootstock a number of years and had nearly given up, but after last year’s failed Giant Fuyu graft, I allowed one sucker to grow. This spring the sucker
Just do chip buds, they always work. Maybe I will go out and try some buds today. I think my Chocolate has created some dormant buds by now, and maybe I can get it to stick on my non-stick rootstock.
Make sure to pull off a leaf or two on the scion to make sure there are fully formed buds there. If there is no full bud there it might not ever grow even if it takes.
I just looked at some videos and chip budding looks pretty simple.
Could I ask you some questions about your procedure for persimmons?
Hi Larry, here are some answers to your questions.
You can chip bud from June through September. For persimmons I sometimes do them early so I can force it the same season. I don’t think you want to force much past mid-July, after that it is better to wait til next year.
I wrap chip buds with parafilm but many things can work. I don’t use aluminum foil on chips.
When you do a chip bud you are not doing anything to the plant other than putting one chip on it. Don’t remove leaves other than a few that might be in the way while grafting. Then either wait 2-3 weeks or wait til next season, and prune off all the other growth and hope the chips will sprout in a few days (do check to make sure the chip took well before pruning things off). You can alternatively just break and bend over the growth so the chip is dominant, but the plant will still have leaves. Once you force it don’t let anything be growing above it, it needs to be the apically dominant bud.
I did a chip bud today on my non-stick rootstock, here are some pictures.
I hope I can force these buds in a few weeks.
Wow, you are so good at explaining things-The instructions for how you did it and the pictures are perfect. Your students are such a lucky group to have you.
I have a couple Fuyu trees and one Nikita’s gift, but I would like to make one tree that has both cultivars on it, because I have so little land.
Thank you!
Thank you Scott, that is so helpful. I’m going to try a few now and then attempt to force in a couple of weeks.
The “non-stick” stock you budded onto looks young – is that first year’s growth?
My rootstocks are much larger – it’s tricky to make a shallow enough cut to have the cambium of the bud-scion and the rootstock line up on both sides.
The stock is over five years old. The shoots are what came up this year after my grafts failed. You need to chip bud to shoots, it doesn’t work on fatter shoots or trunks. Also grafting to green wood can sometimes work better than lignified wood. I didn’t have any last years shoots since they were all cut off before I grafted back in May, so I had no choice this time.
This kind of graft is called green-green, both stock and scion are from active growth. You can also do green-dormant (green stock dormant scion), dormant-green, dormant-dormant. I did some green-dormant grafts at the same time I did this persimmon, I had an apricot graft that had failed and I was trying to get it to stick as a chip bud on a green stock using what was left of the scion wood I had in the fridge.
I don’t do a lot of budding, but I’m used to completely covering chip buds, but wrapping T buds like that with the petiole still attached.
I know there there’s more than one way to skin a cat, but do you have reasons?
I don’t think it matters. I did four chips total on this stock and I think three of them I completely covered. If the petiole is sticking out a lot I sometimes don’t wrap it.
Ah, that makes sense. I don’t have much in the green stock dept. as I cut everything off hoping for bark grafts to take.
It’s hard to understand why some of the bark grafts grew up to 12" or more, totally calloused, but then wilted and died.
@scottfsmith
i’m sorry I came up with two stupid questions, but I cannot quite follow along because I’m very naïve about grafting, could you explain what it means that you’re using “non-stick”stock?. And also, you use the verb “force “. What exactly does it mean to force the graft?
(Is it to kind of other leaves, or the distal part of the branch so that the grafted bud Is given maximal support by that point?)
I think he meant that the rootstock does not want to accept scion wood from a cultivar by non-stick and force would be making the bud leaf out this year instead of staying dormant until next spring.
Thank you but does the word stick mean to contact or be closely opposed to, or does it indicate a dowel, or a short branch, a thin and short piece of tree?
