I’ve been given or traded or purchased in a few cases so many different trees and shrubs that I am no longer sure I can graft all of them. I have apples, pears, figs, pawpaws, pecans, persimmons, blackberries, and so much more. Still more has not yet arrived. Do you get overwhelmed?
I’m planting peas in my garden today. It is a beautiful sunny day with lots of preparation for spring!
Routinely. It has become an annual ritual. Inevitably some things get postponed or triaged. 
All the time.
I routinely give away larger potted trees to other locals but root/graft many more. It’s a disease.
Still have cuttings from 2023 spring that need to get tossed.
I thought I would take this year off from planting. Then we ordered a couple hundred pines for windbreaks, then a couple scion trades, which meant i needed to order 60 more rootstocks to make absolute use of the scions… so i also need ot get more posts and wire to support a row of B9 apple rootstocks… and so it goes… Glad i have enough land to support my addiction.
On a much smaller scale than many here, I ordered more varieties by far than I have trees or rootstock.
I’m going to struggle finding appropriate wood to graft to. I’m sure I’ll end up with some size difference issues so I’ll be doing some fun grafts.
Yeah. Will probably go through 150 or so rootstocks here this year. And stool a cache for the future. Put another 40 in the stooling beds.
Its difficult to get everything grafted, but it’s even more difficult to get everything i grafted last year planted out into their permanent spots.
Yes, I overshot on persimmons. I had to scramble to find rootstock as I only have a few potted seedlings that are suitable. I’m not looking forward to trying to graft as many scions as I have but I’ll either have trees to give away (best scenario) or insurance against my failures.
I put in a 200 foot row of peas today. It is a good start on my spring garden. Next will be carrots, radishes, and turnips.
My wife thinks I’m crazy…
She must have talked to my wife. Ha
Now that i am retired… it is not so much like overwhelmed because I have much more time to spend on it and I have been knocking out the work pretty steady.
Finished pruning all fruit trees last week… weeding and mulching and fertilizing all beds and fruit trees this week…
I am maintaining stuff at two locations now… our current BIG home site… and our near future new home site. So really have more to do than usual.
At our current home site… I have persimmons… Prok, JT02, Rich Tooie, Corora de ria… Apples… Early mc, novamac, akane, hudson golden gem, gold rush, goumi… red gem sweet scarlet, 2 blueberry beds, 3 blackberry beds, 2 strawberry beds, eu plum mt royal, gerardi mulberry, my veggie garden and compost piles, 2 loganberry, and 100+ raspberries in multiple beds. A CHE tree, a lapins chery partially top worked to Monmorency. Chicago Hardy fig.
At our new place… IKKJiro, 2 J Plums, 2 Apples, Kassandra, Nikitas Gift, WS8-10, Zima Khurma, Silk Hope mulberry, kieffer and imprived kieffer pears, Isons muscadine, elderberry bed, blackberry bed.
Ordered but not recieved yet… to be planted at the new location… Oscar mulberry, 2 Crandall clove currants, Cardinal persimmon, royal medlar, oh my muscadine.
Callery pears are pushing small leaves now… i have one to graft over to imp kieffer at my daughters place. That will be the first of many grafts done this spring… my garage frige crisper drawer is near full of scionwood collected by trades.
I have a row of spinach and leaf lettuce that amazingly survived the winter… they got snow covered while we had our 2F and 6F nights…
I cleaned that bed up yesterday in my veggie garden.
This is the first year I have ever seen spinach and leaf lettuce survive unprotected (by me) all winter here.
TNHunter
I feel overwhelmed at times but after a decade i stopped. I ordered one plant this year and I’m not doing any grafting.
I may order one or two more but that’s it. I have so many already spring is super busy as is.
Right. You go from overwhelmed starting new cuttings / grafting new scions to overwhelmed pruning and spraying and picking what’s there. For example, as my potted fig trees mature, I’m in the process of reducing the collection just to keep it manageable.
I know the feeling! So many plum scions! My refrigerator drawer is half full! This may be the year I run out of graftable places on my plums rootstocks, so will need to use several older trees to grow many of my new varieties long enough to determine if they are keepers. Will also create several dwarf plum rootstocks this year using a method that ( @marknmt ) has perfected employing Nanking cherry as a dwarfing interstem by grafting Nanking onto my cherry plum suckers. After they form a year or two of scaffolds I can topwork those into multiple varieties. So 2-3 years from now I will have more spots to graft the ones I am now trialing as we determine which ones are really keepers! Thanks to Mark’s discovery I have a path forward with limited space!
Dennis
Kent, wa
Mark’s way to dwarf plum rootstock! This should be applicable to any compatible rootstock, so worth sharing!
Well, it turns out I wasn’t the first to try this, although I thought I was at the time. Turns out it’s a well-established procedure. I do keep trying to reinvent the wheel, it seems.
I do, but for now, it is still on the cool side in Central Wisconsin, so I enjoy warmer than usual temps without the ability to plant [yet].
I have a silly question: Last year, I planted pips of various apples, and they did quite well. I am planning to pick some scions from my good apples and try to graft them on these seedlings [I figured if the seedlings make it, I should be able to put an apple scion on it, right?]
The seedlings are about a foot tall, so ready for transplanting. They are still a bit thin, but possible for grafting?.
Hi Cecile,
You should be able to use these seedlings to graft once your ambient temps are mid 50s to mid 60s. For smaller ones a chip bud may be the easiest. A cleft or Whip and tongue graft is best for strength and using a bench graft process is easiest to be more precise matching cambium with these smaller cuts. Just practice a few times on small sample wood and it should work for you.
Dennis
Kent, wa
