So far, it looks like french improved prune (unlabelled pic) is the only one that’ll have enough growth i could atleast harvest scions from later. The longest one has about 3" growth in the shade. The early Italian looks like it’s drying up in the heat… Maybe because it’s totally exposed to the sun but could’ve done better in the shade? Attached is a shot of early Italian…thought i better shoot before it completely dies. The leaves are 2" long at the most…
The rest either died or has 2 inches of growth at the most.
Hi Tubig,
I finally scored on my efforts for over 2 years now to top work my sweet cherry trees! So far out of all things I have tried only the cherry plum seems to work. I have also tried some Adara scions this summer but so far they are not breaking out. On 6/24/21 I Performed 3 ea double tongue grafts to my Queen Anne tree. Each of these is now growing in full sun. I went around yesterday to check and I removed the aluminum foil shades from each.
Dennis
Adara is not compatible with some cherry cultivars. From my limited experience, Burbank, Early Purple Guigne, Goodnestone and Montmorency are incompatible. They make a poor graft union with severe swelling. Lapins, Brooks, Utah Giant, Coral, and Black Republican appear to work well with Adara over the past few years.
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your comment, the first year I tried other stonefruit, peach and plum only to fail 100% on both cherry varieties I have 3 trees to convert:(2 Bing and 1 Queen Anne). Then last winter (2020) I got Adara from you and another member and was quite confident, did all grafts as carefully as I could, but also on both varieties I had no success.
I must say that my Adara graft failures this spring may have been more related to a late spring heat wave than to the scion compatibility. Most of my Adara grafts were just breaking bud when the heat wave struck, and I had not covered my grafts with foil since we had such a cold spring. So I suspect that failure to protect might have been the primary cause of failure. So after 2 years of trying, I tested green scions from my cherry plum in July once I had enough new spring growth cherry sprouts to graft to. On my Queen Anne tree I have success, but on the two Bings I am still waiting to see any sign of new graft growth.
I may ultimately find that nothing works to convert Bing to plum.
Earlier this year Tubig had thought his grafts were working. I’m still not sure what variety of cherry he has, maybe he can tell us.
I have not completely given up, and will try Adara once again next spring, but this time I will be better prepared to protect from the heat. BTW, I did protect my grafts this year with foil. Will let you know if I have any other success.
Dennis
Kent, wa
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
@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.
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
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
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
