Plum grafting questions

General Fruit Growing
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I asked these questions in the grafting thread, but received no answers.

I grafted superior and toka plum scions onto a santa rosa plum tree using cleft grafts. I was wondering what my next steps in taking care of the grafts? I’ve found conflicting opinions researching this online.

  1. Should I completely remove the scions that have no growth?
  2. Should I prune away small shoots and only leave one dominant shoot?
  3. Should I do a heading cut on the shoot(s) to encourage horizontal growth?
  4. Should I brace the scion? [I’m nervous about this because I’ve noticed how fragile young plum growth is.]

Thanks!

2
  1. Yes.- completely remove the scions that fail and which have no growth.
  2. Not necessarily. But either way it’s going to work. When you do, pick the one that’s pointed in the right direction.
  3. Not yet. Let the shoot get some length first, and then decide how much encouragement it needs.
  4. When in doubt … I guess a lot of people do that, but I generally don’t. Of course, a lot of people are better at this than I, so maybe you’d better wait for other’s thoughts.

If you have any question about answers 1-3 see answer #4 …

Good luck,

:-)M

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Ditto what Mark said.

Out of a few hundred plum cleft grafts I have never had one break off from high winds. Bark grafts have been a different story. Mine frequently break at the graft union after a few months when they are 30 to 40" long so bracing would be good in that case.

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4

Absolutely. Two great answers from Mark and Dan.

Dax

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When removing the scion should I cut it down to the stump or actually pull it out of the branch?

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I always just cut them off, but I don’t know that it wouldn’t be as good or better to yank them out and let the branch close up a bit. But my concern is that if done too soon it would damage the callous on the other graft.

Hmmmm … ponder, ponder, said the bear of very little brain …

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7

I ripped both out and filled the little holes with pruning sealer. 1 scion was totally dead. The other scion was still alive, but dead at where the fusion would have happened.