What's your favorite graft for larger rootstock?

A … gives you 2 points of cadmium contact
B … 3
C … 4

B and C get a little more wonky :wink:

Next time i graft a goumi i may try C.

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I’m doing A, there’s 2 points on each side. There’s a slight angle, depending on length of the cut and width of rootstock vs scion. I worry about the strength with an extreme angle like c, but it’s probably fine.

An oldtimer tip I picked up for clefts: when almost done tilt the top of scion slightly away from stock, thus forcing the stock and scion cambium to cross. Like a very tall, skinny X.

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I often do the same if there is even a slight difference in size. I have trouble seeing the cambium line on small scions. It’s like extra insurance that the two will cross somewhere along the graft.

Your numbers only count cambium contacts on one side of the scion/rootstock connection. It happens on both sides. I don’t even even do A (unless it happens due to the length of the cuts) and with the simple cleft you still get two cambium contacts and after 100s of grafts, the success rate is well above 95%. I can also correlate the few failures to bad scion or rootstock being not vigorous. One exception is citrus - clefts just don’t work for me there but I get good success with whip and bark grafts.

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@californicus … i see now…

C - would have 8 points of contact considering both sides of the scion.

But they would all just be crossing points of contact (small points of contact)

Is that better than two long points of contact like you would have if you lined it up nicely on one side ???

IDK.

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More points of cambium contact is definitely useful but there are also benefits in keeping the graft union straight (reduces further damage, heals up clean, etc). The more you tilt the scion, the more crooked the graft will be. Many will heal fine over the years but it can also change the shape of the branch. That’s why I like whip and tongue in some cases over cleft.

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Crossing cambium is sufficient and safer. You don’t even have to look where it is and you will hardly miss the connection. Good for big numbers of grafts.

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Well one was too skinny for clefting two pieces of scion so I did what I think is called a modified cleft?

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I would call this wedge graft (double wedge?). My opinion is that this rootstock is not too thin for cleft - you can tilt the scion, as @Evenfall suggested recently, although I would use different method (w&t).

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What tool/knife are you using to make the double wedge(?) cuts?

The scion was about half as wide as the rootstock, it seemed that a standard cleft would have just crowded the two pieces there with less cambium contact while making a cut that was harder to heal. I could be wrong.

For my scion I usually have a pair of craftsman miter cut snips but I made those with a brand new box cutter blade.