I have a male American persimmon approximately 8" in diameter. I am considering cutting it off and grafting several, maybe 6?, scions to it. Is this a good idea? One every 3-4"? A quick search says you can do this up to 12" diameter, but I would suspect the larger the area, the more difficult to heal over.
At what height should it be cut?
Straight across or at an angle?
If the grafts take should most/all but one be eliminated? When?
I also have a smaller, about 6", poor quality female that I could use. Would it be better or is grafting to something this large just a bad idea in general?
Neither tree has any limbs below 10-12’ since I kept them trimmed so I could drive my tractor a/o mower under them. Both appear to be healthy.
I have other wild persimmons at a better size for grafting but they are farther from my house and more difficult to care for, protect from deer, etc.
That sounds about right grafting that many on that large of a rootstock.
I’d say cut it at a height that’s easy to work at.
Usually it’s cut off flat, but you could do it at a slight angle, the graft up higher would have to be the one to save.
I’d say to cut off all the other less vigorous grafts after it starts growing/healing over the the top of the bare wood.
I have a theory/plan for grafting over a larger stump to get it to heal over quicker if you want to hear it, not tested, but want to try it myself to confirm if it’s worth the little extra effort.
I’m always interested in theories, if it sounds reasonable I may try it too.
My theory is to graft the six scions around the trunk like normal, then bridge graft between the scions. Some of the possible variations that could be tried are:
- Have the bridges coming from all six scions and meet in the middle (could have the connection in the middle be fit together like the scions are broad wedges fit together in a circle (can’t have very penetrating wax that can get in between) all flat against the wood or the meeting point be all cut in thin wedges stacked on each other held tightly together and down with a stapel pinning them down)
- Have all the scions run from one scion connect directly to the opposite scion, could do one single bridge scion across the face or two that one will cross and just be one laid across the top of the other (maybe scrape the bark where they touch so they can fuse).
If it sounds too unclear I can try explaining better or just take some pictures of what I mean.
There are other ways of doing it, but these seem the most reasonable.
Here is an example of how it goes…
My first graft was a bark graft of greardi mulberry to a sawed off 3.5 inch diameter white mulberry stump.
Above is what it looked like at the end of first growing season.
This is what the graft union looked like at the end of first growing season.
It can take some time for the growth to cover all that flat. If you eliminate all but one… it will take much longer to heal over that flat.
Best to leave all… and have them spaced out 1.5 to 2 inches… so they can all help with healing over that flat.
You can select 1… to be your central leader and grow into your tree… and cut the others back allowing them to continue to grow some and continue to contribute to healing over that large flat area.
Once it is healed over… you can eliminate all but your chosen central leader.
Cliff at Englands Orchard does it that way.
He says if you eliminate all but 1 early on… the tree will rot out and die before that flat heals over.
TNHunter
I have had much better success rates grafting persimmon scion to smaller persimmon seedlings or root shoots than to larger cut off stumps.
And have noticed this… often when you cut down a 4-6 inch diameter persimmon tree it will send up root shoots that same season or the next.
Those root shoots grow very strong and are excellent to graft to.
TNHunter
@KS_razerback I think I understand, had to lookup bridge grafts
@TNHunter Are those large staples? Looks good, incredible growth. I wasn’t clear in my first post, I would wait until the wound was healed prior to cutting off some of the scions
@Chunky … i did the final wrap on my graft using a tarp strap.
You might be a redneck if …
TNHunter
I have an apple stump that I cut down last year. I assume it was a wild seedling of some sort. I’ve been considering grafting to the shoots that have grown up since then, but I cut down the original tree due to obvious fireblight issues. Is it worth grafting something fireblight resistant, or will the scion inherit the rootstock’s susceptibility?
There are some exceptions, but mostly you won’t go wrong treating it as above the graft the scions traits, and below the rootstock’s
I use M7 rootstock for apples here… it is said to be resistent to fireblight.
Every apple I have grown… once they start blooming they get fireblight.
My Early Mcintosh has been the best at avoiding fireblight… it is on M7 too… but it is my earliest bloomer (flowering group 2).
So it normally starts blooming and finishes before temps rise to the point that FB is a problem. I am convinced that is how it avoids FB. It is not known to be resistent to FB but it avoids it here because it blooms and sets fruit before it warms up enough for FB.
Occasionally I will lose all fruit from it from a late frost (early-mid April frost). So… even though it normally escapes FB… with that early blooming… you occasionally lose fruit to late frost.
Our springs are almost always wet… and in the middle of flowering group 3… FB normally shows up with the warm up that happens then.
I have a Novamac on B9 espellar trained… it is a flowering group 4 tree… and is supposed to be very resistent to fireblight… well it got a load of FB last year… but some of its early blossoms managed to set fruit and ripen it. The later blossoms all had FB strikes… and I removed so many fruit buds and most of my two lower espellar branches.
It survived though and made some very nice apples… and regrew most of the two lower branches.
Since it blooms later and continues to bloom after our warm up… i bet FB will be a yearly thing for it.
To me… FB resistence seems to be a myth.
If you have active blooms and warmer wet weather… it is going to happen here in the south east.
TNHunter
Here I find that persimmon graft wounds heal very slowly compared to apple, pear, fig, so that might discourage me from bark grafting any persimmon over say 3 or 4 inches diameter . As tnhunter says you need to retain all the grafts at least initially to heal that grafting wound.
Here is one more example… callery rootstock 1.5 inch… bark grafted in 2 improved kiefer scions.
That was early spring 2023.
This was Sept 2023… near end of first growing season.
The next late winter I pruned the two lower (outside) shoots on the left and right off.
The shoot in the mid left I chose to be my new tree central leader.
The shoot in the mid right… i pruned it off at 1.5 ft tall.
My central leader i pruned it off at 5.5 ft and let it develop scaffold branches last year. It did a good job of that with some bud notching and limb bending.
That shorter 1.5 ft mid right shoot… I just left it there all season last season… but pruned it occasionally to keep it smaller.
At the end of last year growing season those two scions had almost completely healed over that flat spot… but not completely.
I will be leaving that shorter mid right shoot again this season… keeping it pruned shorter… and expect by the end of this growing season for that flat to be completely healed over.
Once healed over and dormant I will then cut off that scion/shoot on the mid right. It will no longer be needed.
TNHunter
Coming back to me now: a few years ago Dax had a good tutorial on “banana grafting” if I recall correctly. It involved cutting the rootstock, slicing the bark lengthwise on that rootstock and then peeling it back like a banana peel.
In the next step, again IIRC, the scion, which is the same diameter as the rootstock in Dax’s version, is peeled back the same way and then stacked on top of the rootstock. The rootstock “banana peel” is then lifted over the scion and bound in place, trimmed, wrapped and so on.
Obviously what the OP is trying to do is different, but it seems to me that if you peeled the bark back about 6" on your 6" diameter stump and then cut the stump off leaving the bark attached to the remaining stump, well, you’d have some living material to try to fold over the stump after grafting.
Not sure it would be possible if the bark were too thick and brittle etc., but it’s a thought.
I had never thought of doing it that way, that might work a lot better. If the bark is too thick you could cut off the non green part to leave just the green flexible part.
Tried a version of that on this Persimmon graft last year. Folding the living bark over, carefully piecing together.
Placed the cut off on top to apply pressure.
The reveal
The bark died anyway, left with this after trimming off the dead.
In contrast this one pretty much took over the whole stump in one season.
This one done in the normal fashion, cut off and two scions bark grafted.
Second scion grew that little stick in the back.
I haven’t done any 8”ers. If I did I’d damn sure paint the stump to prevent rot. Tactical blunder not to on Persimmons IMO.
I cut them off chest high at a comfortable working height. Also helps with deer pressure.
After reading everyone’s comments I am re-thinking this.
would need maybe 8 grafts, 8" diameter > approx 24-26" circumference
long time to heal
may rot ,leaving me with a less than desirable tree
What does everyone think about this?
If I cut this tree at ground level, chances are it will put out several shoots from the stump and that close to the ground I don’t think the rotting stump would cause the resulting trees any problems. It would also probably send up quite a few suckers, then next year (maybe even later this spring, early summer) I should have a good choice of options in the same location.
This is the route I’m taking. I cut down 14 x 10-16" trees last spring. After about six weeks they were sending up root sprouts. The head shot shows a root sprout that was six feet. Hopefully I’ll get a lot of root sprouts this year.
Great idea.
I’m thinking of stumping a few pawpaws with diameter 3-5 inches.
But I’m not sure I follow the logic that cutting to ground level would prevent rot related issues versus cutting several inches above ground.
I would’ve thought cutting to ground level would hasten or increase likelihood of problems…