Whitch graft

I have a plum tree that I wont to change to a different plum. This past year I changed one oh my pear trees from a cooking pear to a 4 in one pear tree. I used top graft bark. About 99% took. The problem is the grafts just don’t look real strong. This next spring I wont to change a plum should I use a different graft for a stronger graft.

No need to change on account of graft strength. Either cut the new graft back to stiffen it up or support the graft.

When grafting over a big stock like that people can’t expect to regrow a new top back to old size in one yr. It simply won’t be that strong that soon. Take 2-3 yrs to return to former size. I’m talking here to people in general not giving you a hard time. Lots of talk of blown out grafts recently.

Your grafts look beautiful to me!!

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Fruitnut
Thanks I was not sure just what they should look like. They seem to be ok we have had a lot bad weather have not had any brake. I was just wondering if there was a stronger type graft?

When you put a little scion onto a big stock no graft type is going to be strong for a few yrs. The easiest thing to do is shorten the scion growth to reduce leverage on the graft junction. Do that about two yrs and it should be OK.

Definitely good advice based on my experience this year. Plums seem more problematic than apples for sure, I dunno about pears.

I have the grafts on my pear tree well supported. I would like to prune them this winter and save some scion wood to replace some of the grafts that failed and graft some of the stumps that I didn’t have enough scion wood to get this year. Hopefully I can keep them held up until the leaves fall and the stiffen up. There is just so much surface area on some of these stumps it is going to be a slow process do them to heal. I grafted Fuji onto a small seedling Apple this spring, one bark and one cleft graft. The rootstock was about 1/2 an inch in diameter, both grafts are healing nicely. The cleft has covered over half of the stump. The bark is almost as good.

Thanks for the info. This plum I am going to graft this coming spring always comes out latter than any of my other plums. Will the new grafts come out late like the plum dose now? :yum:

It is hard to say how much effect any rootstock or rootstock with interstem (your likely arrangement) will have on the scion(s). However, it is the above graft scion (each individual bud actually) that has most of the say in when to breaking dormancy.