My first grafts, as usual, were on quince rootstock. They leaf out before other trees. These were actually sprouts from my medlar tree, which is grafted onto quince rootstock.
I have been noticing that it's harder and harder to keep scions in an unheated shed. They end up leafing out on their own, which is not helpful to grafters. I want the root stock leafing and the scions dormant. I was able to store a small portion of persimmon scions in the fridge but we have 3 very active adult cooks in the house right now, so I don't see how I could keep other scions in the fridge.
It also seems like the time period to graft is compressed, since the scions are aging more quickly.
I tried to store some scions in those green compostable bags, but they all dried out. I won't do that again.
I'm trying to time my compost tea application so I can spray everything I need, such as peaches, grafts and quinces after they leaf out.
It's always so exciting to see the little bud grafts emerging this time of year.
I hope your grafting is going well.
John S
PDX OR
John, how cold do you need the scions for storage? I am thinking about getting some scions next season, right now we are mostly planting trees. We get them bare root from either a nursery or the Benton Count Soil and Water District(this is super cheap if it is an option in your area) in Early Feb so storage is not our problem. I have had very little success so far grafting. I even to a class online from seed savers, but very few are leafing out this year.
It never used to be a problem. We had so little warmth by this time of year that none of the scions would have started leafing out on their own. It was only an issue for persimmons, which are grafted in late May or so. I have been refrigerating them for a while.
33 degrees is optimal, but they should be pretty cold, like mostly below 45 F. We get much less of that these days.
John S
PDX OR
Chris M said
I have had very little success so far grafting. I even to a class online from seed savers, but very few are leafing out this year.
Chris, time is running out for this grafting event, if you feel like making the drive to Oregon City on Saturday. Preregistration is through Clackamas Community College. The event is in conjunction with and held at the Home Orchard Education Center, at CCC. This is guided hands on experience, and you come away with a tree that you've made. Tonya the arboretum manager of many years now trailing from her time as the HOS arboretum manager... I can not say enough about her ability to teach and convey the information of really any of the workshops she offers. Highly recommended. Home Orchard Education Center, no spaces dot org is the website, look for workshops.
Chris,
what kind of refrigeration do you have?
The reason I ask is I know if you can't afford the space to somehow make an area at around -5 centigrade then the reliability of your scions will go down. This is applicable to things involving hard to store things such as maybe some prunus. So these classes are usually not giving good coverage in those areas. I can only tell you that we have all been there with first succeeding with an apple graft after classes and then getting more into difficult things later on (including myself) and then failing.
Here it shows me ramping up a learning curve from 36 months ago of two different kinds of cherry in three different existing clones of the same cherry rootstock that produced shoots from a removed tree. So be prepared to know that difficult to graft things require a healthy strong stock to graft to in the first place. They all three still persist today (example). Now what I was kind of getting to as well that's important is the extra cold needed in order to have the best scions as possible. 36 months ago the only way I knew was the 33 degree Fahrenheit method John just mentioned (and it works). Now I find it's possible to have other vegetation or foods such as possibly lettuce produce ethylene and permeate the gas past the plastic bags too!
I am not sure yet if this (at 33F) becomes a subversive ethylene issue for storing apple as well but I can see this relates highly to the quick demise of my japanese flowering plum wood this year. The same wood from my upper freezer (same appliance same tree) as grafted just today is totally fine.
That's part of the reason why it's almost more important to teach a class that's dedication to a common group of people who use the same equipment to store so that the same mistakes we all do make (ie. John and myself) won't invoke as much havoc with you.
As usual I want to push another external link to you that from a study from the 1960s era which really proves my point of -5 centigrade being very optimal a storage temperature for almost anything. But before I find it I want to explain my own results this year with storing apricot from interior Alaska. So I picked twigs of scions from a young growing apricot on healthy new growth around the month of November which was stored at the -5C regulated chest freezer until I returned for a day earlier last month and flew home to the heights with that. About 2 weeks ago now I grafted that to plum stock and it's looking good with at least two buds breaking! (frozen storage time of 4+ months)
Now I'm looking up time to prove that cherry wood was saved for 10 months by others (ie. 1960s era) as well.
sweepbjames I appreciate the thought but that's just too far for me.
Rooney I think the storage is a challenge more on there end than mine. All the rootstocks made it through winter just not the scion grafts.
If I sound discouraged, I am. I think I will just stick to buying trees, although my experience with raintree nursery was also pretty negative. The trees we have gotten that were local have so far been pretty good. The temps here dropped from a high of 74 to a high of 48, so tough spring so far. No late frosts though.
Sorry to have pictured so much for you that the proper storage of many kinds of scions are not for the faint of heart. If it helps any, I just found the culprit in my fridge for the ethylene source. A ziploc bag of my dehydrated pears!
What I can do is respond to PMs if you want to know where to beget the best conditioned scions from, or of course if you stick around for longer I can leave some for you in the PDX region of what I store of limited things. I'm not an apple collector so just mainly un-patented cherry stock as used for future hybrids.
John:
These are the first time I grafted grapes. I initiated these 2 months ago upon the same root from the mother vine. The one doing the best is the whip and tongue.
I finished my grafting today. Three varieties of pear, two varieties of apple, four varieties of plum.
Also a lesson learned about my plum grafts. It appears that my plums cannot stretch or burst the grafting tape. So the graft takes, then about a year later it dies due to being girdled by the tape. So I need to remove the tape in a timely manner.
I have been adding water to my grafted plants. It has been so dry! I have seen grafts that have taken, but then when it got too dry, the plant will reject it because it thinks it is going through a drought. I dare you to give your grafts a little bit of extra water.
John S
PDX OR
I am talking about trees in the ground. I agree with you that big trees are unlikely to be as affected, with their larger root structure. It is all the more crucial to water tiny trees in pots. They just dry out so fast. There are just crucial periods for grafted trees, that once they get over it, they'll be ok. But not if they dry out before they get over it.
By the way, has anyone started grafting their persimmons yet?
Thanks,
John S
PDX OR
If we had more than one day in a row like today, I'd do the persimmons. I only have a few grafts to make, but its going to cool off. I'll probably do mine mid May unless its still cool.
My trees have all woken up except for the bareroot rootstock I put in. We'll see if its one of those long laggards, or dead. I think I've had one leaf out mid to late summer before.
I've seen bareroots lag a while before waking up. We had one that waited until July, I think, last year in the school garden I work with.
I was concerned, looking at my Szukis American persimmon, not seeing it leaf out. It is later than the others and just starting to barely show any leaf.
So it sounds like you go by temperature more than by time of year?
John S
PDX OR
Any of you grafters ever try Harry Lagerstedt's hot callusing pipe method? Some of you may have known Harry who was a USDA research horticulturist in Corvallis. He turned me on years ago as a great method for these hard to graft ones like filberts and walnuts. You take a 2" PVC pipe and route out slots that are big enough to accommodate the graft union. You insert a 1/2 piece of PVC with heating cables taped to it. Then the 2" pipe is ensconced in foam rubber with cuts where the slots are. You can start your grafting in the late winter long before anything has broke dormancy and keep the roots and scion dormant while the grafts forms callus from the heat.
If you ever get serious about the hard to graft stuff it's really a great way to go. Even semi-sloppy grafters like me get great success because the scion stays complete dormant through the callusing process. Harry showed me his set up and I found it easy to put together and cheap.
Here is a copy of the patent, if anyone wants to get deep into it. Patent from 1983 41 years ago. Since it is not new, I am surprised it is not as well know here. I certainly have not heard of it before this.
https://patents.google.com/pat.....383390A/en
rabbiteye how did you hear of it?
Well, you can knock me down with a feather! I never knew that Harry had patented that idea!
Chris, I knew Harry pretty well as he had a U Pick peach orchard in Corvallis and I also had two acres of peaches at the time. Harry was a member of the North American Nut Growers as was I, and had been credited with discovering the famous 'Ennis" cultivar of Hazelnut. I used to stop by and visit Harry and pick his brain on all things horticultural. He was always very helpful to those of us wanting to learn new things. He was the one that showed me the hot callusing pipe. He never mentioned he had patented the idea though, so I'm pretty sure he'd have no objections to my having shared with you folks.
The hot-pipe was heavily taught in horticulture college books shortly after the patent. Another common practice used more with apples than anything else which I heard used very much at NAFEX is bench-grafting. It's when farmers get too busy in the spring planting seeds they would bring all of the spring apple grafting into the month of December in the garage. The whole thing including unions would stay there for the better half of the month to heal up, then return back outside to keep them dormant.
I cleft grafted this apple around April 7 because I remembered Dave's previous comment about his completion date of April 7. Which consists of two scions from the same apple tree that I collected above snow level in Fairbanks Alaska. The tree had been pretty mauled over by very hungry moose. The temperatures held 50 below for half of a couple of consecutive weeks prior to the time got the wood. I thought it would be worth noting here the explosive growth occurring in the past week. I thought they were doomed or that I had missed the alignment. As it turns out I missed only the wood of one.
What's really interesting about northern fruits is the ability to hold another layer of deeply dormant flowers too. That's what makes apples a hit almost anywhere you go too. The adapted pears this year that come from the same collection sites won't flower though.
I prefer to do bark grafts, but these were grafted to small rootstocks.
On one I did a modified whip and tongue, and a T-bud for good measure. On the other I did bark graft, but the rootstock is questionable.
In the past I've successfully grafted Chocolate, Coffeecake, Izu, Matsumoto Wase and H118. I've tried Saijo a couple of times with no success so I just bought a tree. Once I started waiting for warm weather, and mostly grafting to established trees, success rate has been very good.
I made whip and tongue grafts on them. I just found a T bud that I made last summer that grew, so I chopped it above and it is growing well. Then I chopped another one that hadn't grown. As they have done before, now it started growing too after chopping it above, even though it hadn't shown any growth this spring.
John S
PDX OR
I have been doing some "pre-grafting". When I know I'm going to do some grafting, w and t but especially budding, I will chop the side branches, so that all of the growth goes straight up, into the apical branch that I will graft. This increases the likelihood that the new growth will be large and more amenable to accepting the graft. Some smaller branches are just too small to accept a full w and t scion, let alone a bud.
John S
PDX OR
About 40% of my apple tree grafts were hit by fireblight. We seem to have stopped the infection early. But it took out most of the first buds. Thankfully I did 3 to 4 buds per grafts per scion and many are re-emerging. I did however lose 4 of 133 young trees.
I wonder if this was the new virulent race of fire blight we are seeing. Took out a Rouville which is allegedly highly fireblight resistant. And almost got a second Rouville.
John S said
I have been doing some "pre-grafting". When I know I'm going to do some grafting, w and t but especially budding, I will chop the side branches, so that all of the growth goes straight up, into the apical branch that I will graft. This increases the likelihood that the new growth will be large and more amenable to accepting the graft. Some smaller branches are just too small to accept a full w and t scion, let alone a bud.John S
PDX OR
Well you explained it so briefly. How long do you think it takes in weeks or months to again establish a new norm? I would think it's okay to graft half way through that new norm. This is a higher education for me that I learned from Clair Lammers (late). He saw what I did at his property then taught me my mistake. Years later I asked another grafter if what I did was truly wrong and was told to 'just try it'. I did it once more and lost not just the scions but the whole prunus citation rootstock as well that was 15 years old.
Rooney said
The hot-pipe was heavily taught in horticulture college books shortly after the patent. Another common practice used more with apples than anything else which I heard used very much at NAFEX is bench-grafting. It's when farmers get too busy in the spring planting seeds they would bring all of the spring apple grafting into the month of December in the garage. The whole thing including unions would stay there for the better half of the month to heal up, then return back outside to keep them dormant. fnafI cleft grafted this apple around April 7 because I remembered Dave's previous comment about his completion date of April 7. Which consists of two scions from the same apple tree that I collected above snow level in Fairbanks Alaska. The tree had been pretty mauled over by very hungry moose. The temperatures held 50 below for half of a couple of consecutive weeks prior to the time got the wood. I thought it would be worth noting here the explosive growth occurring in the past week. I thought they were doomed or that I had missed the alignment. As it turns out I missed only the wood of one.
What's really interesting about northern fruits is the ability to hold another layer of deeply dormant flowers too. That's what makes apples a hit almost anywhere you go too. The adapted pears this year that come from the same collection sites won't flower though.
Your point of view is as clear as a blind spot on an awning. It's a lot to take in.
Rooney said
John S said
I have been doing some "pre-grafting". When I know I'm going to do some grafting, w and t but especially budding, I will chop the side branches, so that all of the growth goes straight up, into the apical branch that I will graft. This increases the likelihood that the new growth will be large and more amenable to accepting the graft. Some smaller branches are just too small to accept a full w and t scion, let alone a bud.
John S
PDX OR
Well you explained it so briefly. How long do you think it takes in weeks or months to again establish a new norm? I would think it's okay to graft half way through that new norm. This is a higher education for me that I learned from Clair Lammers (late). He saw what I did at his property then taught me my mistake. Years later I asked another grafter if what I did was truly wrong and was told to 'just try it'. I did it once more and lost not just the scions but the whole prunus citation rootstock as well that was 15 years old.
I do think it usually takes months. Now it's getting too late for summer budding, IMO. But it could work for next year's dormant grafting. You want all of the new growth channeled into what you can use. I have many seedlings that I don't want to grow up into large trees. They are sprinkled throughout the property. If I can graft them to something in particular, I can take them to one of my schools and the kids can see fruit developing.
John S
PDX OR
In that then, your advice is excellent. The rest of this education from Clair is pre-illumination-conditioning. In other words conditions must pre-exist that grass or branches should not cause lots of shade to happen on the active portion of the tree you wish to graft.
Regarding shade, Which being a very curious kind of guy now wonder what kind of involvement is it(?), such as wanting to be further advised what that green serves as that is part of the bark but just inside the outer thinnest covering. That green layer is living tissue because if it's seen as brown then the cambium and that whole part of the tree is dead. Maybe I could have saved my citation had I carefully scraped away enough of what covers the green so that the tree could see any light at all?
John ..always good content, though I admit not having read the entire thread 
Speaking of good content ..addicted to my YouTube subscription (no ads), I’ve been following this dude in Russia. Even commenting, and yes, he understands English.
What’s striking me, beyond his marvelous detailed videos & followup … is how often he uses ‘current’ wood, as opposed to our method of ..cutting & storing dormant scions … and having to use them up while still viable..
RE: … and having to use them up while still viable..
I have used fresh buds and have had little problems keeping them in good enough condition for several days.
Thanks for sharing that link. The thing that I understood most from the clip was the measure of experience such as the angle and pressure of a sharp knife that's hard to describe in just still pictures.
Are you still ranked as an administrator here?
Idyllwild
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
John S
1 Guest(s)