Hi Dan,
I went back to check my notes, I completed the Top working grafts on my 3 cherry trees on 4/2/21. The optimum callousing temps for Apricots/Cherries – 20 deg C. ( 68F). I do not recall why I waited until late March to start, but I think your advice is probably on target. I had some fairly good success with grafting sour cherry onto one Bing tree in early March, so this next spring I will do the same on my 3 cherry trees I am top working. Fortunately I left mother limbs on all three so now I have a number of new shoots to graft that I did not have before.
Dennis
Hi Dan
Today I went to check on my most recent summer grafts with Adara on my cherry trees
On 7/12: Cut 1/2 Adara limb off a Puente by and created 7 scions, grafted 7 Double tongue side grafts to cherry trees: 2 ea by garage, 3 ea on Bing by Bills drive and 2 ea on Queen Anne. Covered with foil.
Today it appears that 1 Adara graft is growing on the Bing cherry. The others appear healthy but are not yet breaking bud. There may be hope for this one
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@DennisD I’m about 99% certain we have a bing tree based on what my mother says she remember the tag being on the tree itself and based on just about all characteristics i can find one about bing.
I also grafted a couple of varieties of gage plums (alleged golden gage and transparent gage) in April but the heat wave a couple of months ago may have killed or damaged most of them. I do notice the most shaded ones tended to be healthy while those exposed either partially or fully look sickly or totally dried up.
Hi Tubig
From your comment it appears that some of your cherry grafts may have grown? Is that the case?
Dennis
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I am in Tempe AZ and am interested in getting some Adara scionwood. Last year, I was able to get Lapins and Stella to successfully graft on my Sweet Treat Pluerry … they suffered but made it through the summer (morning sun on those branches). I grafted a few others on my Candy Heart pluerry; they started strongly but died after a few months (Skeena, Kristin, and Mona). I have a Coral Cherry tree that is on Mazzard rootstock that barely made it in mostly shade. I’ve tried 9 other DW trees on Mazzard and none have survived (including the rootstock). So I’m convinced that the rootstock just isn’t going to work in this climate (maybe I could try starting from seed though to see if that changed anything?). Anyway, that is why I’m trying grafting. I have a few cuttings that I thought I would try again with (Gold, Van, Utah Giant, Skeena, Mona, Kristin, Kansas Sweet, and Abileen). Thought I might try on some of my other trees if I could get Adara as an intermediary. It’s a fun experiment in any case (the ones I want to graft seemed to be lower chill hours but even if they don’t survive or produce, it’s worth a shot anyway)
Hi Anne,
My understanding is that you are trying to add other cherry varieties to your cherry tree. That should be possible without an interstem like Adara. I obtained my Adara scionwood from: Marta Matvienko.
@Marta, perhaps she may help you with Adara.
My attempts so far to convert my sweet cherry to plum varieties has been a trial and error, mostly error process. Been at it for three years now. After first two years of trying without interstems, I obtained some Adara last spring for another attempt. What I have learned so far is that I have more success in topworking if I can get 1 year old wood to grow. My barkgrafts all failed. My only successes have been using Adara and Cherry plum scions as interstems on 1 year old cherry growth.
In retrospect, I am beginning to think that removing the mature cherry trees and starting with a new tree would have been much more productive.
The best results I have had was with several Puente rootstocks I ordered from Fowler Nursery in Ca. A Puente is a Lovell peach rootstock that is topworked into Adara. On these I have created multiple variety peach as well as plum trees very successfully. This spring I will continue adding peach, nectarine, pluot and Pluot varieties to these trees.
So that’s what I can report so far. I wish you good luck and a Happy New Year!
Dennis
Kent, wa
Adara compatibility paper Adara, A Plum Rootstock for Cherries and Other Stone Fruit Species in: HortScience Volume 30 Issue 6 (1995)
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Marta … thanks! I found you last night right after I posted above and ordered some (plus a few a mulberry and Che). I don’t have rootstock for Che grafting so hopefully they will start as rooted cutting.
Dennis… I have lots of peaches, plums, pluots, pluerry, apricot… about 40 … but just the one Coral cherry tree. I don’t know if the coral will survive next summer; I did graft bing onto it (which is doing great) and plan to graft a few more onto it. Sweet Cherry is very difficult to grow in the extreme AZ heat. So I was looking to experiment with grafting onto my non-cherry deciduous trees. I ordered 4 Adara scionwood from Marta. I will try a rooted cutting with a few and use the other two as intermediaries on a plum. I have over 100 successful grafts on my deciduous trees over the past two years (all whip and tongue). Hoping I can find alternative ways to grow sweet cherry in the desert.
I’ll try to ship your order today. Che is normally grafted onto Osage orange. Some people say that they can root them, but I always grafted. Last year, I got Osage orange rootstocks from this nursery Rootstocks They are currently out of stock, however
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Hi Anne,
So it’s not your grafting skills then, most likely the climate does not suit your goal. Two thoughts.
- If you have room for another tree I highly recommend the Fowler Nursery Puente that comes barefoot and should fit your climate better than other rootstocks.
- It’s possible you have another member in your region that has already solved your challenge. You might check out the member map to see if this may be the case: General Location Map of growingfruit.org members
Take care and good luck. Hope this helps
BTW if you are interested in trading plum scions let me know what you have!
Dennis
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Thanks Marta. I have bought a lot from Fruitwood over the past year. That is where I’m getting my cherry from.
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Thanks Dennis. There are several fruit tree Facebook pages for the Phoenix area. One or two people have somehow gotten low chill Royal to survive; some of those trees have died after a few years though. I haven’t found anyone that has tried grafting cherry in this area. Cherry is sold bareroot (usually DW or Costco unknown grower) and at big box but I don’t think most survive. As I prune, I will take inventory of what I have. They are all tagged but I need to start a written list on my tablet! I gave away hundreds of cuttings last year when I pruned … and people dropped a bunch off too. There was not a scion exchange last year (don’t know of any this year so far). Will get back with you later on varieties once I have time. My trees are finally going into dormancy so maybe I will soon be able to walk through my small jungle
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@DennisD here’s an update:
All but the following are still surviving but still mostly dormant right now.
-french improved plum
-transparent green gage
-golden gage
Compared to those i grafted to my satsuma and mustang chum, the 3 varieties above were much much slower-growing. Alive tho.
I grafted a couple of adaras using a modified whip n tongue a couple of days ago so I’ll give an update in a month or so.
How are your adaras?
Hi Tubig,
I have had very good success using my cherry plum and Adara as interstems on my sweet cherries. Where I had one year old shoots to graft the takes last year we’re pretty good and are growing well this spring. I completed my top working using both as interstems the first week of March. So it’s too early to judge these, maybe in a few weeks I can say they are growing, some are breaking thru the parafilm now but until I see a few inches of vigorous growth it’s too early to judge. Glad to hear you are having success too!
I will send a pic or two when mine begin growing.
Dennis
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@DennisD i haven’t bothered with my plum grafts to the bing from last year coz the few surviving were extremely slow-growing. The Adara i grafted to the bing , however, are growing like they’re on steroids–probably more than a meter growth since grafting march 28 this year. I might attempt to graft plum to one of its branches next month.
Hi Tubig,
Yes, my cherry plum and Adara interstems are also growing very fast as well, so much that I am already pruning some back to relieve weight stress on the graft unions. Typically I have been stunting the graft first for support, then removing the graft unions tapes to prevent girdling. Then using the base axil buds of the Adara or cherry plums to graft on my remaining new 1 year old cherry shoots. I am getting near 100% takes on summer grafting I started 3 weeks ago, See below pics:
After stenting to support the graft union while I removed the grafting tape, I then removed the tape and rewrapped with less pressure to protect the healing graft.
Early March graft of Cherry plum on sweet cherry. Note the girdling that would ultimately destroy the graft if left alone:
Recent summer w&t graft cherry plum on sweet cherry:
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@DennisD hey Dennis, whats the diameter and height of the bing cherry tree you converted with the adara? Now that my adara is growing on the bing, I’m tempted to cut the other 2 giant trunks both 20+ft tall and approx 6" diameter so the 6ft trunk i grafted to can hopefully take over. I tried to keep within the 30% rule for 2 years but I’m afraid this thing is just going to keep outgrowing what i cut each season!
They were about 20 years old when I started, About 14’ high covered an area about 12’ diameter. Once I cut all the large limbs back the one year new wood began to grow just below my cuts so those are where I had the best success grafting.