Is it acceptable or discouraged to take scion cuttings from water sprouts/suckers? (I’m talking about the growth that grow straight up from the heart of the tree, not the things that grow directly out of the ground). I have a lot of thick wood in the sucker/watersprout category, but I don’t want to pull it if it’s not worth it.
Second question: is there any danger to scions freezing in transit? i’m currently out o
I accidentally hit reply before I was finished
Second question: is there any danger to scions freezing in transit? i’m currently out of town and some cuttings I received spent the night in the mailbox and it got down to the low 20s. Will these things will be OK come grafting time?
Thanks!
Suckers come from the ground officially and water sprouts from above. Obviously, with grafted trees that’s very important, although with very old trees I’ve seen named variety shoots come out of the ground (unions are often covered over time.)
Water sprouts are all I use for grafting material- just try to make sure wood has well developed buds.
The reason water sprouts are so good for me is that the vast majority of my grafts are placed on other water sprouts. These grafts can grow up to 5’ in a single season.
As far as freezing temps- as long as wood isn’t dehydrated it should be fine. I do try to avoid sending wood during the heart of winter, but that may be an excess of caution.
The water shoots tend to grow pretty vigorously so I think it’s encouraged to take them for scions.
Water sprouts are perfect for taking scion wood. First off they are disposable wood that you’d typically prune out due to their upward and inward growth. It’s also nice that they are vegetative so you don’t have to worry about your 3 week old graft pushing flower buds and god for bid trying to bare fruit. Like Alan said, you can graft to them and get a lot of good growth the first year. I like to find water sprouts that can be trained to provide future scaffold replacements.
In my limited experience, when I receive frozen scionwood, it won’t work. I received frozen apple, plum and peach scionwood last year. 100% of the frozen scions did not take, even with apple and plum which are easy graft.
Thanks all!!!
As has been mentioned, it too prefer to take water spouts as scionwood, mainly because they generally don’t have many flower buds.
With peaches it can be tricky because unlike apples, pears and plums, water spouts from peach are very vigorous, get very large and branch off. So they resemble more like little trees inside the tree, rather than water spouts of other types of fruit trees.
There are always some vegetative buds below the branching, but I hate relying on those too much, because my thought is since those buds were so easily suppressed by top growth the previous season, they may be more suppressed the following season during grafting. That is perhaps a little harder to wake up? Again referring to peaches only.
Re: Freezing scionwood
I allow peach scions to freeze a little bit in my fridge, but it never gets below 30F. Of course this is a lot different than freezing in the mail, or mailbox which can be quite cold.
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It’s also nice that they are vegetative so you don’t have to worry about your 3 week old graft pushing flower buds and god for bid trying to bare fruit. Like Alan said, you can graft to them and get a lot of good growth the first year.
Except when they do bloom. Weird, but Jonagold and a few other varieties bloom some years on one year wood and other years one year wood is vegetative. There are other varieties that usually have flower buds on 1-year wood.
[/quote] I like to find water sprouts that can be trained to provide future scaffold replacements.
I use the original scaffold to tie the replacement watersprout to more horizontal position on the second or 3rd year. Or you can find a water sprout connected to the trunk to replace the entire tree. My customers like a gradual transition instead of butchering the tree and using cleft grafts. Much more attractive in an estate setting.
I don’t understand. 
If the wood, while it is on the tree, can take temps much below freezing before being cut, what happens to the wood in the mailbox that hasn’t already happened on the tree? Do you think that maybe the edges were damaged?
IMO I dont think a light freezing of scion wood has a negative affect. I have had scion wood like Olpea said get to the point where the water droplets in a bag are frozen and have noticed no difference on successful grafts. Dehydration is probably a more likely problem. Or if you have scion wood starting to break dormancy and then it is frozen.
Anne,
I can only tell you from my experience. When I receive scions, I take them out of the packages, dip them in vinegar+ water solution, dry, trim ends, and wrap them in parafilm before put them in a bag in a fridge.
During the trimming the scions that I knew the difference between the frozen ( during transit) and the not frozen ones. Cambium of the previously frozen scions do not look freshly green. It was more brownish. The wood part looks dull.
This scion exchange season, I received one package that scion were frozen because they arrived during a snow storm. The overnight temp was in the low 20’s. I did not get to the mailbox until a day later. The scions were frozen when I opened the package.
I understand your question about our trees withstanding even lower temp in our orchard. The only thing I could say is that those braches on trees are intact. When it gets realky cold here, young shoots died on the trees, too.
Wow. Good to know.
Good point.
I really don’t understand how well wrapped scion wood would be damaged by temps that they endure in the trees. I’ve had scion wood dehydrate in refrigeration, and the symptom wasn’t apparent in the cambium- but the fine bark was shriveled. Nurseries recommend that trees frozen in transit should be thawed gradually- so maybe it is a problem when there is sudden huge fluctuation during transit. Maybe the wood that was damaged had a few days of room temps before being subjected to very cold ones.