I did 6 grafts this year, 3 each of Ashmead’s Kernal and Hudson’s Golden Gem. It’s been a month now (currently mid May) and to my disappointment none of my grafts have taken yet. A couple of them look a bit desiccated as well. I did a bit of grafting last year with some success, so I’m not a total novice. In frustration I unwrapped one of my grafts to have a look, and noted that while the tree cambium was still green, the scion was brown. I snipped a piece of the scion off and it was still green deeper inside. So I redid the graft again on a different tree branch. Curious about other’s experience in this regard. Is a month too long and am i out of luck? If the wood is still green inside is that a reliable indicator that there’s a chance it could still take?
It’s a tough call from long distance. Sometimes they’ll wake up a couple of months later. If the rootstock didn’t have much root and there isn’t many rootstock leaves they will be very slow initially. If the rootstock is growing well and pushing for growth, you can re-graft all summer long until something takes.
It’s nice to see them wake up in a couple of weeks or so, but it can take longer. In fact, I’ve had them callous over but not wake up until the next year. I like to notch right above the limb with the new graft; that often gets them going within a week or two. I just had to do that with a couple of bark grafts I did last summer. Those were with apricot on prune plum.
Quite a bit of discussion here on notching lately, but short story: Take a knife and make a horizontal cut right down to the wood just above the blind bud or graft. The cut should be long enough to overhang the branch considerably. Make a second cut to widen the notch to about 1/4", no more.
I am also redoing an apple graft, one that my dog decided to eat. I have some grafts on trees that still have not woken up, but I am just giving them time. The most active grafts I have are on my Asian pears, those bad boys are basically seamless now.
There is a temperature range where grafts are most likely to take, so better to not do an outdoor graft in the heat of summer where it is more likely to dry out or get burnt.
Nature finds a way!
I had a few of my re-grafts take. Depends though. Gotta have a green scion. Norfolk Beefing remains my very stubborn problem child.
I think the season may influence the graft. Typically grafting is done in late winter or early spring before new growth begins. And even sometimes, they can “die off,” but then come back later once you have forgotten about them.
Thanks everyone, great comments and ideas. I redid a couple, notched a couple and left a couple others alone. I took the tape off two more today. One of them was brown on both sides (redid that one) but the other looked to have set pretty well, so I taped it back up. Fingers crossed at least a few of them end up taking off.