Scion Length

Thanks @Appleseed70 !
i could still be wrong, of course, the mere ‘student’ that i am.
It really is a fascinating phenomenon but quite elusive one. Funny that we’ve split the atom, fused the atom, , been to the moon and back, yet we still have no cure for cancer, and no idea how sap could be ‘pumped’ 300 feet high into the canopy of giant eucalypts

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I thought I had an understanding how water got to the top from researching it before. I guess there is more to it than I had in my mind.

Auburn your grafts do look impressive! Did the end one break first?

This is an earlier picture of the 15" scion and it is budding out mostly even.

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I agree with others Bill…your cuts must be perfect. It really does appear as though it is growing completely normal and as though it was never cut or joined. Good job brother.

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Very interesting!
When I prune figs or grapes in the late winter, there are no leaves. No transpiration. But they pull up lots of sap and leak it out. To the point where its dripping. I slso have a grafted apple scion that’s doing that now.
So must be osmotic. There is no evaporation driving that in leafless pruned plants.

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I most likely should not dive into a subject of which bud should pop first with my limited knowledge. The one thing I can offer is careful observation of what I do. The two long scions posted were almost level which might lend itself to the even gravitational pull on the resources that cause the timing of bud opening. Some of the other long scions I grafted were pointed upward and one pointed slightly downward. The ones pointed upward tend to pop buds on the end first, The one pointed downward appeared to leaf out evenly. One of my interest in the long scions was to replace short runted lower limbs on dwarf apple trees and see if they would fruit the following year. I will remove the tape soon and add a simple split for a little while. Bill

In the grafters handbook by rj garner, he refers to the necessity to use long scion with many buds each when frame working a large tree as opposed to top working to lesson the vegetative vigor and bring fruiting wood back online sooner. I believe his distinction being a frame worked tree has retained the original trees framework, whereas a top worked tree has been cut back much more severely.
Here’s a google books link to the page

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Very interesting, thanks for posting. In my case I’m looking for quick fruiting whether top working or “frame” working. Am just about finished this grafting season so can’t put this to work until next year. I have this book somewhere. It’s probably the same place as the scions I can’t find. I need a scion inventory system!

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Would like to here what everyones grafting projects are this year. Any interstem grafters? Anyone trting longer vs. Shorter grafts? We have enough special projects that i cant commit to more but im very interested in some of the concepts discussed.

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I’m going to graft a little bit of everything this year. Including my first peach and apricot. Last year I had great success with apples and pears. But from what I’ve heard peaches, nectarines, and cots are a whole different beast. With cherry and plum being somewhere in the middle. I’ll graft my apples and pears earlier and wait until it warmer and buds are popping to try peach.

I also want to try side grafting a cherry tree of mine that’s misproportioned. Have not attempted a side graft yet.

Last thing graft related is dealing with thin scions. I have a lot of small thin wood this year and I think I’ll be cleft grafting a lot of it.

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The real trick to stone fruits is pleasant consistent weather and growth on the rootstock. Once the rootstock starts pushing growth its time to graft. Plums are very easy to graft similar to pears and apples and cherries are graftable as well. Sour cherries were easier for me I should say and the sweet cherries not so much. Apricots are hard because our weather fluctuates so much. If it warmed up and stayed that way it would be no problem but we have spells of hot and cold and for peaches and apricots that makes for tough grafting. Keep us updated and let us know how you do if you would. I know some people wrap their grafts and others put a little plastic tent on theirs. I just wrap the union and use wax or grafting seal on the end of the scion. I should be ashamed blaming the weather because people do it inspite of bad weather.

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I should be finished after top working a wild apple to spy this year. I am going to cut some long branches just a couple off a wild apple that I converted to Honeycrisp. Those branches are encroaching on my rainier cherry. I want in time to get the fruit closer to the trunk. I want to graft my peach tree too. I’m still working on that skill with the weather swings here in Mi. I bought five plum rootstocks and five cherry. I will plant some and graft some. I have to read a bit more on those, but I’ll plant them and grow them to graft onto. A couple I will try making trees with right away. Every year I try more and more and work on techniques used for different circumstances. Grafting with long scionwood can give you spurs to grow fruit on the next year but is that the smart thing to do? Grafting short ones is better for success. It has less chance of coming apart. A couple years goes by in no time and then it doesn’t matter that much anyway. That’s my thoughts.

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I like doing single bud grafts with scionwood too. It stretches the wood you’re short on and allows for more grafting. If the bud takes your good to go! I use a tool that makes it easy to graft short wood. I do a lot of them and have some redundancy.

I usually left 2 buds per bark graft.

Tony

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I tried whip and tongue on a single rootstock last year and frankly butchered it. The scion leafed out, but then died several weeks later. I presume it was latent energy in the scion. Of all the grafts I tried in the spring (probably close to two dozen) only one took and that was my runted spy. I used a grafting tool, but I think I just got going far too late in the season.

Last fall I did a LOT of T-buds. Most were from such small samples that the trees ejected them rather than healed them in. I do think I may have succeeded with 2 or 3 though. I’ll see in a couple of months I guess.

I’m going to be grafting 22 rootstocks this spring and plan to try a variety of methods. I received a very nice Opinel for Christmas as well as another roll of parafilm tape. Additionally, I’m buying one of those Craftsman cutters and some 3M splicing tape. I refuse to accept a single successful graft this year. I’m going to try a few more Whip & Tongue both with the knife and the Craftsman tool. I may try some cleft grafts though I’m really uneasy about the look of the graft union long term. (pure snobby, no legitimate reason for it) I may try the grafting tool as well again.

Rootstocks should be here in a couple weeks. I suppose I better start scrambling for scions and get my orders in asap. (Yeah, I should have had that a month ago, I know…)

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One bud, as either they all take or none of them take. One bud is much less likely to get knocked out of alignment with rough handling.

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Not only is there no legitimate reason (from an aesthetics pov), but there is really no reason at all not to use a cleft. If the host and scion are similar size and not wildly different in terms of their bark characteristics, you will not even be able to find the graft union in a season or two. If the sizes are considerably different, then the cleft is one of the obvious choices anyway. WT (when properly executed) may become “hidden” a bit sooner…maybe, but nothing worth even thinking about imo.
It is my opinion, and that of many others, that a cleft is the easiest graft to pull off, so if you had a lot of failures last season with the WT, then you really should give a few clefts a try.

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I use scions with two buds 95% of the time. With interstem I double graft with the interstem being 6-10 inches long, these have taken fine the last two years.

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To be clear, I’m a complete newbie at this stuff and I’m not passing judgments on anyone. I assure you that you all are light years ahead of what I know. My concern on the cleft graft came in part from this picture from applenut:

Cleft Graft Example

The take on that graft looks fantastic and it’s clearly very healthy. I have a hard time seeing those two blending together un-noticably down the road though. And honestly, who cares? The point is to get fruit, not win beauty contests.

Thankfully this isn’t quite true, although true enough as AS means it. He’s not talking about the most brutal, graft on stub methods but splice and whip and tongue (so much more elegant) methods.

But even with these less brutal methods, one can see the slight swelling of the graft for at least several years, which is fortunate, because I would otherwise accidentally prune off established grafts in the act of pruning more than I already do. I really hate that!