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Graft compatability among plums and cherries
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Crankyankee
Connecticut
79 Posts
(Offline)
1
February 2, 2021 - 9:27 am

I am entering year two of establishing a backyard orchard. Last season I bought mostly apples, sweet cherries, a few plum hybrids and a peach all on dwarfing rootstocks. These were all planted at my daughter's home which is about an hour away from our own home.

This year I have ordered tart cherries, Mirabelle and Gage plums and a few more plum-cherry hybrids. These are on various rootstocks including Gisele 3, Saint Julien A and one each of Colt and Mahaleb because I couldn't get the particular varieties on dwarfing rootstocks.

This second group will mostly be planted at my own home because there is no more room at my daughter's. However, I would like to graft varieties from this group onto trees at my daughter's and vice-versa.

Since the graft unions are usually very close to the ground I will be needing to graft onto the scion portions of the trees. Given the following list can anyone offer opinions on which ones will be graft-compatable with each other?

Sweet cherries (15 varities)

Montmorency - tart cherry
Danube - Hungarian tart cherry
Balaton - Hungarian tart cherry

Crimson Passion - P. fruiticosa x P. cerasus hybrid
Cupid - P. fruiticosa x P. cerasus hybrid
Juliet - P. fruiticosa x P. cerasus hybrid
Wowza P. fruiticosa x P. cerasus hybrid

Evans - Morello cherry

Bianco Rosato di Piemonte - Maraschino cherry

Flavor King - pluot

Flavor Punch - plum cherry interspecific hybrid
Candy Heart - plum cherry interspecific hybrid
Sugar Twist - plum cherry interspecific hybrid
Sweet Treat - plum cherry interspecific hybrid

Reine de Mirabelle - Mirabelle plum
Mirabelle De Metz - Mirabelle plum
Mirabelle De Nancy - Mirabelle plum
Geneva Mirabelle - Mirabelle plum
Parfume de Septembre - Mirabelle plum
Prune D'Ente 707 - Mirabelle plum

Bevays Gage - European Gage plum
Purple Gage - European Gage plum
Golden Transparent - Gage plum
Rosy Gage - European Gage plum
Reine Claude Doree - European Gage plum

Thanks!

Zone 6a in the moraines of eastern Connecticut.

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
835 Posts
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2
February 2, 2021 - 11:26 am

Crankyankee said

This second group will mostly be planted at my own home because there is no more room at my daughter's. However, I would like to graft varieties from this group onto trees at my daughter's and vice-versa.

Since the graft unions are usually very close to the ground I will be needing to graft onto the scion portions of the trees. Given the following list can anyone offer opinions on which ones will be graft-compatable with each other?

Sweet cherries (15 varieties)

01. Montmorency - tart cherry
02. Danube - Hungarian tart cherry
03. Balaton - Hungarian tart cherry
04. 
05. Crimson Passion - P. fruiticosa x P. cerasus hybrid
06. Cupid - P. fruiticosa x P. cerasus hybrid
07. Juliet - P. fruiticosa x P. cerasus hybrid
08. Wowza P. fruiticosa x P. cerasus hybrid
09. 
10. Evans - Morello cherry
11. 
12. Bianco Rosato di Piemonte - Maraschino cherry
13. 
14. Flavor King - pluot
15. 
16. Flavor Punch - plum cherry interspecific hybrid
17. Candy Heart - plum cherry interspecific hybrid
18. Sugar Twist - plum cherry interspecific hybrid
19. Sweet Treat - plum cherry interspecific hybrid
20. 
21. Reine de Mirabelle - Mirabelle plum
22. Mirabelle De Metz - Mirabelle plum
23. Mirabelle De Nancy - Mirabelle plum
24. Geneva Mirabelle - Mirabelle plum
25. Parfume de Septembre - Mirabelle plum
26. Prune D'Ente 707 - Mirabelle plum
27. 
28. Bevays Gage - European Gage plum
29. Purple Gage - European Gage plum
30. Golden Transparent - Gage plum
31. Rosy Gage - European Gage plum
32. Reine Claude Doree - European Gage plum

21-32 would work on each other and on the commercial St. julien plum rootstock.

14-19 would work on 16-32 but 21-32 won't on anything outside of 21-32.

1-12 won't work on 14-32 or 14-32 on 1-12 unless the variety of plum 'zeestem' or 'adara' is used in between the two groups.

Earlier you mentioned sweet cherry. They could be inter-grafted with everything between 1-10.

Keep in mind: they have long established extensive lists in the nursery trade of which varieties work best on the exact clonal rootstocks which for obvious reasons is not included in the above. You made mention of dwarf peach earlier on. If your peach was bought grafted on the 'citation' then expect 50% reduction in tree height and very "leggy growth" meaning lots of blind wood. California has taken citation out of favor for peaches for that reason. Citation is great for plums. For me it does great under plums.

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Crankyankee
Connecticut
79 Posts
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3
February 2, 2021 - 1:03 pm

Rooney, thanks very much.

The pluot, plum-cherry hybrids and Bevay's Gage are on Citation. The other Gages and Mirabelles are on St. Julian A apparently because Citation is hard to obtain. I myself tried every source for Citation rootstocks that I could find with no luck. Same for Newroot-1 which is Zaiger/Dave Wilson only and the Gisela's which are locked down tight to the contract growers.

Will 'zeestem' or 'adara' work for grafting plum onto sweet cherry, and do you know of any source for them?

Zone 6a in the moraines of eastern Connecticut.

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
835 Posts
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4
February 2, 2021 - 1:35 pm

Happy to help!

In my second line I said: [ ... ....but 21-32 won't on anything outside of 21-32 ] means 21-32 must be on 21-32 and no other plum root will do. The citation is a plum hybrid root good for only other plum type species other than your hexaploids per #21-32. Also: the way citation is listed it is not as dwarfing for plums the way it is for peaches anyways.

If you can't find citation then look for another hybrid between same two plum species krymsk-86 (should work).

'zeestem' and 'adara' are not under patent. The first was but expired. The second has a long list of cherry cultivars. So there's good reliable information that sweet cherry cultivars are much better than tart cherry on either these. With the same I grafted putting plum on the first one sweet cherry 'F12/1', yes it worked well, but swelling at the graft union. So, yes with almost all kinds of cherry root slower growth rate is expected. The results of plum on gisela are for me very high rate of fruiting and no to little swelling at the graft. Cropping is almost nothing on sweet cherry 'F12/1' (mazzard).

Of course for the 05-08 they won't need this and are automatically dwarf because at 5 feet on my sweet cherry seedling grafts (one tree stock on my driveway) they are staying bushy.

I could send you some seed of crosses between these two but if I were to send any budwood I would need to elisa lab test for viruses, else as a private citizen become a risk to the HOS forum here.

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Crankyankee
Connecticut
79 Posts
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5
February 2, 2021 - 4:49 pm

>> I could send you some seed of crosses between these two

Do you mean crosses of 'zeestem' and 'adara'?

Zone 6a in the moraines of eastern Connecticut.

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
835 Posts
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6
February 2, 2021 - 5:07 pm

>> Will 'zeestem' or 'adara' work for grafting plum onto sweet cherry, and do you know of any source for them?
You can get smaller trees.

>> Do you mean crosses of 'zeestem' and 'adara'?
Yes.

Also: the idea of using cherry rootstocks under plum like this please just remember to ask for pictures of my grafts before actually performing. I remember pointing out to you several months back what I do when testing new never tried before combinations. The reliability goes up when leaving bottom below the graft growth in place, in turn, due to biology problems associated with the phloem interactions or connections etc.

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
835 Posts
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7
February 2, 2021 - 9:19 pm

>> The pluot, plum-cherry hybrids and Bevay's Gage are on Citation.

Possibly another misunderstanding of mine in that I confused you so let me try and fix this.

The 21-32 numbered hexaploid groups of plums (ie. Gages) belong in the same hexaploid group as St julien clonal rootstocks. So you might ask why your 'Bavay's Gage' was bought on 'Citation'. To which I would say there are combinations of any plum varieties that can work on almost any other plum rootstock such as 'Citation'. But often these numbered 21-32 in the group will not work on other plum groups (ie. citation). There are many peaches working on St julien and also many don't.

Again: reliability of an unknown combination goes up when rootstock branching is retained anywhere below the graft.

I can't say why I didn't catch on the first time on what you meant. Sometimes just say to me "I'm not clear" which will force me to catch my own writing mistakes. I say this in advance of more questions I know you have. -Thanks.

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Crankyankee
Connecticut
79 Posts
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8
February 3, 2021 - 7:33 am

>> more questions I know you have.

I greatly appreciate your instruction and advice, thanks for your patience. It occurs to me that I should go back through the forum and read all your many posts before I ask more questions which you may already have answered.

One general question I have is whether drill grafting is more or less effective than bud / patch grafting? What I mean by drill grafting is shown in this video beginning at about the eight minute mark.

t=862s

Zone 6a in the moraines of eastern Connecticut.

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Rooney
Vancouver SW Washington
835 Posts
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9
February 3, 2021 - 12:51 pm

I understand your questioning of budding in the slip verses the youtube dormant stick grafting and drilling but let's not forget the starting subject of conversation started on your end concerning the grafting between plums and cherry, the latter of which is a much more tedious task than what looks like apple grafting per video. He said he got 70% takes which would be low for apple and very high for stone fruits.

By keeping on topic I would strongly recommend taking a look at 129-130 of 523 pages of
site:pdfdrive.com physiology and culture by Melvin Neil Westwood

Both pages are more informative of attempting to overcome the complexity involved grafting various factions of fruit groups and for a good value of a download. It (the link) involves the distinguishing and sorting out of the several types of problems encountered, some of which can be compensated with the double graft.

So I can't recommend you risking tree grafts done at right angles to a trunk. Because (after you reading both pages) most of the time when you're lucky to get plums or lots of cherries it will weigh down and break at that point.

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Crankyankee
Connecticut
79 Posts
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10
February 17, 2021 - 8:16 am

>> So I can't recommend you risking tree grafts done at right angles to a trunk. Because (after you reading both pages) most of the time when you're lucky to get plums or lots of cherries it will weigh down and break at that point.

Thanks for that book link, very useful reading. It doesn't say, though, what crotch angles are optimal for a given fruit although the objective should be to avoid trapping bark. Any advice on the optimal crotch angle for cherries and plums?

Ideally I would like to maintain a pedestrian size orchard which is why I chose mostly super-dwarfing rootstocks. Some of the stone fruit was only available on more vigorous rootstocks including several on Saint Julian A and one each on Myrobalen 29c, Colt, Mahaleb.

Various nursery websites say that Myrobalen and Saint Julian can be kept at any height by pruning but is it unreasonable to prune to six feet for these?

I don't expect to be able to contain Mahaleb and Colt to six feet but am wondering how small I can actually keep them. Does anyone know?

Zone 6a in the moraines of eastern Connecticut.

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