Do any of you insert the scion at a slight angle in cleft grafts? This is the one graft where I have a hard time getting an exact cambium contact so have started angling the scion top slightly outward to force the cambiums to cross at some point, like forming an X. This reduces the length of cambium contact compared to a perfect vertical match and seems to slow down the “take” but reduces “no takes” for me.
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I’m with you on the union needing to be recognizable. On a few rare occasion I actually get some grafts to blend well. Count me in for adding a little paint near the union. Bill
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Henry fields and gurneys formerly painted graft unions. When I was a kid the trees showed up like that. I don’t see the value in it unless you have a mature tree you topwork and don’t want to accodrntly prune off the wrong thing as mentioned above.
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Nurseries do this to identify varieties and avoid confusion- it was probably not done by HF but by the nursery they contracted with. It is actually an expensive way of accurately keeping track of inventory and the owner (or head family member) of Adams County Nursery talked to me about some of the problems involved with color coding when you are propagating hundreds of varieties.
The issue came up because I encouraged him to color code all the trees he sells because labels often fall off the trees in my nursery. I may start screwing them into the wood even before I sell them. Color coding is just too complicated for my operation.
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Toungue in cheek, but really, who do you have coming over to your house? I try to trap people into asking about my trees so I can talk about them, and my friends have learned not to take the bait. I could have a tree in the middle of my driveway with a cherry, peach, apples, oranges and a pineapple on top and my friends would avert their eyes carefully and be sure not to even MENTION fruit cocktail that day.
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I guess I do it this way if I’m in doubt -I used to do it as a matter of course- but most of the time now I don’t seem to worry about it. I probably think I’m getting it dead on when in fact I’m off a little both top and bottom. __
I thought his post said they were the same size at start. Perhaps he was talking about another graft.
I live on a corner lot, in town, on a major street with only a front yard to speak of. Anything I put out there will be high visibility.
Oh, and a heavy helping of OCD to boot.
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Some followup scion length pictures and comments 2015 and 2016.
001 Red Rebel
002 Honeycrisp Over 1 year old scion wood
003 Moonglow Pear
004 Spur Arkansas Black
005 Craven Crab.
006 Empire Apple-Bud9 interstem Same time graft for both
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Not pictured is one side graft of pear that the scion was 34" and new growth of 16". It needed temporary support.
Really nice pictures for documenting scion work. I should try that.
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thanks, that is very useful info!
Since reading Garner’s book I’ve been a big fan and advocate of both longer scions and frameworking v.s. topworking. I have a lot of experience with both now and can offer some insights. This is almost entirely in regards to apples, though I would never hesitate to treat pears exactly the same and plums more or less too. I guess first, I think choice of scion length, or possibly more relevant number of buds, is context dependent. If I’m doing bench grafts and only want to grow out one bud into a whip, then I use a short scion with at most 3 buds, and prune to one when the tree gets underway. For working over a tree, or adding a variety, I use long scions, in the hopes of getting more fruit sooner. As someone already pointed out, the extra buds on the scion may turn into fruiting buds. They won’t always, but they can’t turn into fruiting buds if they aren’t there right? I was just looking at a tree I grafted last year. I had mostly short scions to work with, but of the long ones, one variety grew shoots all over and only a couple of fruit buds, while another grew out only a few shoots and formed a bunch of fruiting buds, which is more typical. If you want to see it I showed it in this video
I’ve never made a very careful study of this phenomenon, but I can say that it works sometimes and given enough scions, and that the other issues raised here about using long scions can be addressed, it’s a good way to go and I always use longer scions in preference when grafting onto an existing tree.
So, skimming through this long thread it looks like the major concerns are dessication, mechanical breakage from scion weight/or pressure of any kind, sap flow, and overuse of tree/scion resources for growth. I don’t seem to have much trouble with any of those.
Desiccation I do paint my scions with grafting paint most of the time, though I haven’t always done that. I used to have the same intuitive feeling that long scions would dry out faster, but after using them a while I started to think that maybe there actually could be an advantage since they have more resources. More wood means more water, more food etc. Given the same number of buds, perhaps a longer scion could actually be better. That is speculation, I’ve never tested the proposition. I can say though that it has not seemed to be a problem for me. Theoretically if all the buds leafed out and started growing, that’s more surface for evaporation, but then, again, there is more resources in a long scion. If anything really breaks bud and there are no resources at all coming in from the tree, then it’s going to die really fast anyway. Short version, especially with sealed grafts, it just doesn’t seem to be a problem. I have grafted horizontal scions over 2 feet long with a splint, just to see what would happen. I’ve also stacked 6 grafts, one atop the other on a single small rootstock, and all of them healed and grew. One year I grafted all of my seedlings full length, some over two feet long onto dwarfing stock. Some of the Geneva stock had only one or two wimpy roots. I staked, shaded and sealed the grafts and 100% of probably 40 or more seedlings took and grew well.
Sap flow, again, doesn’t seem to be a problem.
Mechanical disadvantage. Most certainly, more leverage means more potential for breakage. With scions up to at least 12 inches, but probably still longer even, I see no reason to take any measures other than tight wrapping. However, I do recommend very tight and thorough wrapping! I usually use strips of plastic bag, green landscape tie tape, or most often, white PVC budding tape. I’ve never used parafilm or any other special grafting tape, so I can’t speak to those, but whatever it is, it should be able to stretch to really compress the graft and get it tight. With the stuff I use, I do at least two wraps over to get it very secure. I don’t recall seeing many grafts break. It’s not something I even really think about except late in the season after unwrapping when wind can whip stuff around, or if I’m climbing around in the tree knocking stuff. unwrapping and re-wrapping can work if those are an issue. A well wrapped graft is remarkably resistant to breakage at the graft.
If the tree is vigorous, especially if worked over all at once, early fruiting does not seem to be an issue. I think that yes, there is sometimes need to pay attention to balance of growth v.s. fruit if the goal is to grow a tree/branch. Typically this has not been a major problem for me. I’ve had some scions fail to grow seemingly due to fruiting right away, or the first year even if there are already fruiting buds on the scion. Others have grown like crazy and fruited at the same time. Yet others have no fruit and sit for years barely growing. There are so many factors involved there that I don’t think it can be reduced to a rule of thumb and you could drive yourself crazy trying to guess what is going to happen. Typically, my approach on an established tree is to get fruit asap and worry about the rest later if it’s an issue.
So, there is my take on it, and mostly experience based. I typically use grafts of 8 or more buds for topworking if I have them. Sometimes it seems to be an advantage, and other times not, but again, if there are only two buds and both grow out, you are growing all new wood before it can form fruit buds. If you are after simple growth and producing a frame, then there may be no reason to use short scions. Then again, what if you seal a long scion and pick off all the buds except two? Is there not then much more resource for the new growth to draw on? It’s an interesting thought. It took me a while to reach the point where I could slough off the short scion thing enough to even ask that question. There are probably more factors even, like how many points of growth there are for the tree to push into and whether that is productive or counter-productive in a given situation. Who knows. At this point I’m into worrying less and experimenting more. There is more to be learned here. Some controlled experimenting and careful observation could be helpful, but I think just doing whatever and seeing what happens can be pretty instructive too. If scions are healthy, sealed and wrapped tight, my experience says that you can get away with a lot.
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I enjoyed the video. Good to see others tinkering with different scion lengths. Last season I attempted lengths from 1"-34". Most of those survived. The one extra long scion of 34" was a side graft and it was necessary to give it temporary support. All the other long grafts were self supporting (12"-22"). The key to not having to support these is using a W&T graft with the cut being extra long so it is actually no weaker than any other place for the entire length. Bill
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Excellent point on the whip and tongue. I much prefer them. If doing clefts, I orient the split horizontally so that it’s stronger. Glad to see you pushing limits. I think much is possible that we might think impossible. I don’t use support either under any normal circumstances. It just isn’t necessary.
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Nice job with that video and your others on YouTube.
I love your videos…all of them. You are very good at videos and narration (actually you are extraordinarily good!).
I don’t really agree with your assertion of longer scions, but don’t really refute it either. One thing I’m sure of is that you (imo) overestimate the resources available in longer scion lengths. Transpiration is an issue and the more there is the worse it is. I’ve tossed plum prunings to the side only to see them leaf out profusely followed by very quick death. A still mending cambium pathway is unlikely under less than ideal conditions to be able to sufficiently supply that load demand. They just don’t get very far on their own resources ime.
Though you haven’t had issues with mechanical damage, most have, and I don’t think there is any question the likelihood and severity is undoubtedly greater with longer scion lengths.
Having said all that I suppose earlier fruiting might be a positive, but I’m not sure about that either. Your experience (and that of Auburn’s) has encouraged me to maybe let my stuff just a tad longer though. To me though, anything longer than 12" is just crazy. We’ll see.
Anyway…keep up with the videos. I like that your videos are straight up, no bs, no gay music and other distractions. I found your videos and posted them a few months ago…someone here actually told me you were a member. Really, really like your stuff. Glad you are here.
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Skilcut, it is great to have you here. You are an interesting and thoughtful contributor IMO. I started to watch your video but quickly realized it wasn’t of use to me because speed is the most important thing to me and splice grafts are my means to get there fast. I like to get a single graft done and labeled in 5-10 minutes. I hate the task and find it tedious because I do so much of it.
I wanted to suggest that your theory about a longer piece of wood containing more energy for growth doesn’t seem the most likely theory, although it’s possible it could contain more energy for healing if the scion is actually a contributor in that. (I don’t think it has been shown where callous growth comes from- the scion, the original tree, or both). Once the scion has merged with the wood it really shouldn’t matter how much the piece of branch is original wood and how much is scion wood as far as determining growth of new wood.
But you are butchering the tree you are reworking and leaving no leaf buds for the tree to use as nurse wood so the advantage in growth is probably because of this- a longer shoot provides more leaf buds that require a great deal of energy to form. So, I guess that would mean the wood has more energy, but maybe not in the way you are thinking about it.
Almost all the grafting I do is to expand the number of varieties on any given tree. I use only pieces of wood with two buds and graft almost exclusively on water sprouts on the trunk. On established trees it is not unusual for me to get over 3’ of growth in the first season from a small piece of wood. I’ve seen larger pieces of wood used a lot by beginners and on a tree that is being gradually changed over the long piece doesn’t seem to inspire any greater growth.
I agree that a longer piece gives you a better chance of a few apples the next season- depending on the variety, of course. Many types of apples are inclined to set their best fruit on the 2yr wood of 2nd year shoots but some seem to take 3 and some are tip bearers.
I’m different than home growers in that most of the varieties I graft I have no need to make fruitful in a hurry. My rush is to have a saleable tree with usually two varieties on it.
Incidentally, with peaches or anything that sets fruit on last years growth, all that matter is the vigor of the take as far as being able to quickly sample fruit.
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I’m not sure what benefits you get from using long scions but I do appear to have a few 2nd year flower buds that I hope to ripen a small sample of fruit. It might be possible to get 2nd year flower buds by grafting shorter scions in locations that they point slightly downward. As of now it has been enjoyable to just observe how a few unusual scion grafts turns out. One of the things that I have learned is to not to be so quick to draw conclusions so early. I have put on about 100 grafts this spring and most all of them are 1-3 buds just because I know that this is the standard because it works well. Bill
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I found a good use for a long scion this last spring… I had a great grafting limb on a pear, but it was a bit too low. So, I grafted on a really long scion pointing straight up so the top was a lot higher. It did amazingly well, I have never seen a low graft do so well.
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