Same here, lol. But I’ll turn the thought around: I have successfully grafted apricots and pears and didn’t even notice difficulty. So I’ll pretend I don’t know how daunting this is
Another tip: I made little sun canopies for my budded-out cherry out of plain white sports tape I always have on hand. Fold it over so only a bit is sticky on the bottom. Then stick it on so that the bud doesn’t get the hot sun.
I do want the apricot callus area to get lots of heat in this weather, so I’ll just cover the buds with white, and the black tape I use to wrap the graft part will heat up some.
I too have had good luck with “scions with green buds”
Wrapping the whole thing with para film.
Grafting on to rootstock that is pushing growth.
As both pieces are ready to grow right now, it seams they heal quickly and grow.
I do not try to store such scions, just cut off one plant and put on another right then, fresh.
The whole dormant scion thing may be over rated.
Well I grafted the budding pear scions 2 days ago guess we’ll know in a few weeks if it worked or not. Didnt have any parafilm so i coated the whole scion with shellac.
my extreme and almost comical ‘take’ on this is(if intended rootstock are still frozen and asleep) to wrap the entirety of the scion with saran or parafilm(not injuring the leaves), then placed in a transparent bag with exhaled air and a moist paper towel), then store in a wine cooler with transparent door and set it to the coldest temp(around 45F and no less) but also placed in a south facing window to get some daylight This way, since it is already metabolically active, the stem will be ‘feeding’ itself from photosynthesis, but not suffering much from lack of moisture and CO2), and not exactly metabolically active due to the cold temp.
as soon as rootstock is ready, snip off the largest of leaves, but retain the buds, then graft.
2 weeks later all buds of the grafted sweet cherries still look green. I cut the parafilm to help the buds pushing it away if the grafts take/took. When buds are already green they have a hard time to push through parafilm. It is the swelling that breaks through easily. In this case the buds already were done swelling when I wrapped them. They look a little compressed under the parafilm so I decided to relieve the pressure. If the grafts took they should already be connected enough to the rootstock to support the green buds until completely healed in.
Well the pear scions i gathered in mid Feb with the green buds I grafted on March 21. Buds started coming through on 4/6/19. I guess maybe it didnt matter.
4 out of 5 cherry grafts are starting to push growth now. I did 3 grafts out of the scion with very advanced green buds. One of those grafts seems to be failing. Maybe it is because of a bad grafting job. The failing graft is the one z-graft I did, making it 0% success with this method for me. But to be fair I only use it in some emergency situations, if the rootstock is much smaller than the scion. So condition for this method were worse and I am not very skilled using this method.
I did 2 more grafts out of the other scion with less advanced buds (green nonetheless).
The 5 cherry grafts are those in the foreground and the one in the middle (z-graft).
My rate on the budded out Korean giant is 3/4 for now successful. The Warren bought from the same place is looking like maybe 0/2 but one may barely pull through. (The Magness from a trade took well so it’s fine except a waste of money.)
Hopefully the budded out cherry will pull through. I really want this one. I have maybe 2 of 6 but that’s just including buds that are still happy looking and not fried. They look ready to spread, so fingers crossed! I have aluminum foil on them because the sun has gotten warm here.
