For apples, you will want to gather scion wood anytime now and put it in the fridge with moist towels (paper or blotter type paper) wrapped around the cut end and then placed in a plastic bag to keep that moisture in around the stems.

Stone fruits are indeed different since you want to try and catch the new buds about a month prior to bud out of your stock trees. (apple and pear tree scion wood lasts longer for me so I wait for the end of Feb. for stone fruit scion wood gathering)

You can always simply wait till just before bud-out and do your grafts then, you will just want to work fast since you will gather buds and graft them at that time.

I like to have bud grafts waiting for sap flow for as short a time period as possible, especially for stone fruit trees.

I hope that helps you out. Those grafting tools are sweet by the way, short learning curve, perfect cuts every time and they speed up the process because of that.

 Rooney Said:

Here in the mild winter valley we will see buds push on stone fruits from here going forwards, and pears and apples in another month when the game is "all over" for collecting stone fruit scionwood. Well almost all over. Some plum species tend to bud out almost as late as apple, but there is still the stress factors to the tree that must be taken into consideration due to the ramping up of bacterial gummosis disease.

I know this is a sticky rather difficult topic to address the many other issues of timing (eg. rain sponsors gummosis and stress in budwood) but before too long (in days) it will be game over collecting most species of stone fruit wood.

I have had my stone fruits stored in 27F (yes buds push at 36F and can be frozen to much lower temperatures) since the first of the year and as per my owl icon I am from here and know better having seen many a failed graft due to wrong scion handling. When I go to Alaska I will still be gathering scions from friends fruit trees of any kind in April and stored for one month prior to grafting them to other cherry, plum, and apples that are already growing out-doors stock trees.

Yep! Too late to think about scions from Plum Ume in inner NE Portland. Ume is the earliest I know of.

sprout, John S, idell & decanter2020 said or say:

"Just to clarify.  I collect stonefruits and quince during dry weather (for the sake of the tree).  Then they go in a baggie with water? (enough moisture & loss prevention of the scion).  Sorry, am I understanding this correctly? "

Sprout: I get your point and think and hope it's all straight now. 🙂

Glad it helped Sprout. Scions can actually dry some and then come spring can be rehydrated for a day prior to grafting by enclosing damp feeling peatmoss around scions. When the scions almost sink in pure water they are fully saturated and again ready to graft.