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
@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
@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:
@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.