On a similar but slightly different topic - anyone have any idea or knowledge on grafting a fruiting cherry onto a flowering cherry? While I was researching grafting apple trees, my mom started wondering if she could graft a fruiting variety onto her large flowering cherry; it's a very large tree (30' high, maybe 40' diameter) and about 60 years old. Sure would be neat if possible, the tree's beautiful in flower; but then the petals all drop and usually get turned into a mushy rotting matt by the spring Oregon rains! Sure would be nice to have a bit more payoff than just the showy blossoms & nice shade later in the year. Was just thinking of a branch or two, nothing major - and there's a fruiting cherry in the yard next door as a pollinator.
Thanks for the help, and any criticism welcome! Just a wild idea....
Dave

Gee, it sounds like I just need to try it then! I hadn't thought about the sunlight issue, but that's not a big deal; just have to try doing some budding out near the ends of a couple of branches I guess - even though the tree's huge & many of the branches are pretty high, a lot of the lower ones do arch back over and get within reach from the ground at the outer ends. Can always borrow the neighbor's orchard ladder to do that and pick cherries, assuming that they grow; and it isn't like losing branches to pruning is likely - almost no pruning other than occasional removal of dead or low branches has ever been done to the tree. Mom's been in the house since '70, so it's not not likely that's going to change soon.
Dave

The UK collections list 295 cultivars, some of these are now known to be duplicates (following DNA analysis), no new varieties have been added since (I think) 1989 so 500 recognised cultivars seems totally plausible. In Burbank's time I reckon it'd have been near enough impossible to gather 500 known cultivars, but he was of course a hugely prolific nurseryman, allegedly raising 1000s if different plums so grafts of 500 of his own selections might well have been possible.

The UK collections:

http://brogdale.org/nfc_plants.....?plantid=3

I was able to cram more than 355 fruiting cultivars unto 40 trees in 725 square feet of land. I have fresh fruits every week the entire year. Of course my harvest is whatever maximum you can get from 725 sq ft of land and not from 355 trees. My harvest is just spread the entire year.

Apples, peaches, neactarines and plums, there are thousands of known cultivars. Cherries only a few. If you naturally assume that each cherry seedling is different, then you can easily claim to have a zillion different cherries that you can graft but they will all be un-named yet. Most cherries are better off cross-pollinated so each seed is in fact a hybrid. Even if self-pollinated, the embryos are zygotic and would be a different recombination of genes.

One of the tricks of plant breeders to speed up maturity and fruiting of new hybridized cultivars is to graft the scion from hybrid seedlings unto mature trees. You can cut down in half the waiting time for fruits, and so that is the only way the claims to have grafted 500 different cherries to be true. Of course by this time most of those cherries would have been rejects by now and only the best ones we have selected remained, and we are left with just so few. I myself have 24 cherries on one tree.

I have grafted several cross species as well unto one tree. Have grafted together 10 kinds of Cydonia Oblonga, 8 kinds of Malus domestica, 8 cultivars of Pyrus communis, 5 cultivars of Pyrus pyrifolia together on Pyrus betulifolia. One of the best interstems to use would be Winter Banana Apples. It can accept both asian and european pears and can be grafted unto quinces as well. While quinces themselves can accept some apples, asian and european pears, but not all, so interstems are wonderful.

I also have 60 different kinds of citruses unto one tree. I have 43 kinds of persimmons grafted unto one tree. 28 kinds of apricots unto one tree, and many others like pluots, apriums, plumcots, peach cots, nectarines, peaches, almonds, peach plums, other complex hybrids, and even have native American plums, Russian plums and their hybrids. Gages, prunes, mirabelles as well as multi-grafted grapes. My apples, althoug I tend to go for the fireblight tolerant ones, I lose track of how many exactly as I change the cultivars constantly trying new ones each year and chopping off the ones that I didn't like.

I make aluminum tags out of soda cans. Cut into 1/2" by 1" strips and punch hole with a paper hole puncher, then use UV resistant garden ties. So I keep track of everything in databases, their bloom times, tastes, harvest time, diseases, and other things. You simply etch the name on the aluminum tags by placing it over on piece of cardboard or paper plate using ball point pen. The name can be readable for a good 50 years when the aluminum can would have disintegrated by then. You can make about 20 tags per can, just use a small thin sized scissor to maneuver the curve surface of the soda can.

There are many advantages to multi-graft and one must be prepared how to balance the tree via regrafting. They are quite nice to look at.

Here's a sample of my 40-n-1 plum:
How many kinds can one tree hold? This one tree has 40 cultivars, all fruiting.
Here are samples of plums and plumcots. Mostly Japanese plums and their hybrids. Not shown are my European and Russian types on the same tree

Tree is loaded from the knee high branch level to the top of the canopy

Benny's Green Gage. Grafted this year, fruited this year!

Asian Green Gage Plum:

Santa Rosa Plum, one of my favorites for wine making

No, these are not mangoes... Golden Nectar plum. An Heirloom type

Inca Plum, another heirloom type:

Plumcot

Assorted plums. I have many different colored plums, but only 4 types that are purple-leaves and purple colored fruits: Vesuvius, Hollywood, Kuban Burgundy and another Russian type

And to think that these cherries were T-budded together into one major limb late in the spring:

By joereal at 2007-06-28

And by fall that season, it has achieved a fan like arrangement that I had hoped.

By joereal at 2007-06-28

Cherries are one of the easiest to graft. Cleft grafting or whip and tongue in dormant late winter, T-bud during budswell, and bark graft during early spring to bloom time, they will all work at great success rate. so go ahead and try them.

You can also bark-graft cherries this summer, even T-bud during the fall.

Joe, you continue to be a huge inspiration. I believe it was your bark graftign tutorial that got me over my inhibitions to give grafting a try and now I'm really into it.

You mentioned you have multi-grafted grapes. What technique do you use? Do you have pictures of your grapes on yor GW profile?

I'd love to see some pictures from further back of your various fruit trees. The fruits themselves are obviously beautiful, but I'd like to get a better sense for what the trees look like and some sense of the spacing and proportion.

Do you know of any cherries that produce quality fruit and also have some genetic dwarfing? I have a lonely Compact Stella tree. I'm not quite ready to graft vigorous cultivars onto it and try to fight them into balance. I have enough other trees to practice the balancing act on between the apples, pears and plums. But if there were a couple of varieties that might behave a bit I'd probably want to give them a try on my cherry.

At least one of your pictures seemed to show plums and cherries on the same tree. I thought that was possible, in spite of some other comments in this thread. Can you confirm that is indeed the case. The original poster seemed to like the idea of having something more exotic than just some more cherry varieties.

[quote="tahir":3ohzy2ia]Wow Joe that is really something, spectacular.[/quote:3ohzy2ia]

Thanks for the compliments. I'm just a programmer with lousy skill on the knife and anyone can do it much better than me, and passion to do such is the single biggest thing required.

thanks for the compliments Viron. If every you are around the Sacramento Area, just send me email and I will pick you up or you can drive to our place in Davis, and personally give you a short-step tour. You are most welcome to sample whatever I have on the branches, as I have fruits year round. And I have 48 kinds of fruit wines, and certainly we can sample a lot of them. The wines come from fruits, what better way to preserve your fruits than turn them into wine? The longer, the better... well at least up to 7 years, then they will gradually decline, except if you make port-style which can stay for thousands of years without decline.

We are zone 9 by USDA classification and Sunset Zone 14 in the Western Gardener's handbook.

With respect to cherries, I will confirm your suspicion that we are almost cheating! One of the best tips that I can give you or to all other cherry and stone fruit grafters are these:
1. Never graft cherries when it is very humid or wet, drizzly or raining. When disease pressure is high, you would most likely injure or kill the tree, not only your graft. So wait for at least 2 days of dry spell to do your grafting to let it sufficiently dry out after the rains and 3 days more of rainless days in the forecast.
2. Some days before you graft, if there are dormant sprays you needed to do, to control fungicides, wait for it to take effect and then do your grafting thereater.
3. Always use disinfectant on your pruning shears and knives. You can sterilize them with 1 part laundry bleach mixed with 9 parts water, and then rinse off with 70% alcohol.
4. Sterilize the destination limb or stem that you want to graft by spraying with alcohol or Lysol (that contains 79% alcohol). If you use 70% ispropyl rubbing alcohol, spray your hands also, it is good massaging fluid. Let the alcohol or lysol dry off, takes about 2 minutes before doing the cuts.
5. Spray also the scionwood and let dry.
6. Then use parafilm wrap, then rubber band over the joint, then parafilm wrap to cover the whole scionwood.

The reason why I said we're almost cheating because California is almost always dry major part of the year except during winter. The disease pressure is very low, so most grafts are successful.

I've done all types of grafts on cherry trees. I will do T-budding when I see the pink color on the swollen unopened buds. Sometimes when I find it difficult to lift the bark flaps for T-budding, I immediately switch over to chip budding. Same success rates, only that chip budding is a little bit longer time required to match perfectly.

I am more concerned with the rain during the grafting than anything else. And we never prune cherries and apricots in the winter for the very same reasons of disease infection and contamination during wet season.

I bark graft cherries whenever the bark is slipping. But I do love to do whip and tongue since I can do that one way earlier and it would free me up to graft the more demanding stone fruits like the peaches and nectarines which are better to graft during the bloom and when leaves are starting to push out.

I use whatever scionwood I have, dormant or non-dormant. But I stop grafting whenever the air temperature in the forecast will exceed the low 90's. I'll just have to wait it out. But when a break happens that the next 10 days or so would be in the upper 80's to low 90's then I would resume my grafting.

I do the multi-grafting to the extremes, since I have very limited space, and land in the city is at a premium, even if they say real estate is down, but not in our place. So instead of designing the trees like you would a normal commercial orchard, I have to be extremely creative for a home with itty bitty yard, and of course there are prices to pay for such creativeness. I am forced to graft vertically and I have very good ladders and long-pole fruit picker. Except for the cherries, I can reach virtually every fruit in the yard, some of my pears are 26 ft tall, and it has 40 kinds on it more than half have fruited.

And there is a neat trick to maintain a tree well-balanced by simply grafting the less vigorous cultivars over the more vigorous limbs. Do that for 3 seasons, and the tree would have stabilized in terms of shape and balance, but of course surprisingly, you may end up with something like 5 interstems on a single limb, but hey, it works! So if I never lose any cultivar that I like. They are always transferred, and grafting doesn't stop for me. I like doing it, and would treat it much the same way like pruning. If you prune the tree each year, then there is no reason why you can't graft your trees each year for balance. And besides, it doesn't take that much time anyway, and allows you to sample many many cultivars at a very cheap price through time. When you graft unto mature trees, the very same year or most often the next season, the fruits on the newly added cultivars would be at par with a mature tree. Unlike grafting unto seedlings, it is going to take 3 or 4 years before the fruits achieve comparable quality.

Every second saturday of January each year, I go to the Scionwood exchange sponsored Santa Clara Valley chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers of which I am a member, as well as our Sacramento Chapter of CRFG.

I agree that the pattern of the weather has a big influence on your grafting success. Mood swings of the lows and the highs can wreck havoc on those grafts or gently assist them for take. For us, I don't have problems with sap flows when it begins or have too much of it. All of my grafted scionwood are always sealed with parafilm tape wrap and they don't dry out.

Here's my pattern for grafting in our area:
Apples, pears, quinces: can be grafted in the dead of winter using cleft, tongue and whip. Must have to seal the scionwood.

Then followed by plums, pluots, apricots, cherries when the buds are swollen.

Then by nectarines and peaches

Then persimmons (must wait till the first tiny leaf on the destination limb has opened)

Then lastly the evergreens like citruses, avocadoes, kumquats.

And generally: T-budding when the barks are slipping, switch over to chip-budding when the barks are hard to open. There are various times when the barks are really easy to open, and in our case for cherries, it happens when I can see the pink colored tips of the swollen unopened buds. There are many nuances and details for each fruit type and very long to write them up in this post.

I store several dormant scionwood in the fridge as backup until July. Then I throw them out and switch over to live scionwood using the same techniques. I use live scionwood as early as February for citruses doing chip budding, and as early as June for the stone fruits in our area.

Feel free to ask more, even disagree on many issues, it is okay with me. If we have different results and sometimes disagree because of what we observed, i am encouraged because there will be new knowledge to be learned whenever we reconcile the disparate observations.

Regards,

Joe

[quote="Viron":1i98o7a7]I Agree Location - location - Location? And when's the Tour?

I enjoyed, salivated, and learned from your amazing post, but I've got some questions / remarks about your last statements: "Cherries are one of the easiest to graft. Cleft grafting or whip and tongue in dormant late winter, T-bud during budswell, and bark graft during early spring to bloom time, they will all work at great success rate. so go ahead and try them. You can also bark-graft cherries this summer, even T-bud during the fall."

I've had it confirmed locally (the Willamette Valley, Oregon) that dormant top-working Cherries is one of the most difficult, or 'iffy' of fruit tree grafts. And as mentioned in my prior post, I (along with others) have only about a 50% take with cleft-grafted cherries. {Whip & tongue bench-grafting appears to do fine.} I've wondered if it's their "peffy" or nearly hollow scion wood that can mash between heavy stocks? Other's have suggested they've an excessive sap flow. And we've also learned to 'do them first,' earlier than anything else.

We've another poster from Southern CA (Amazing - another Eden), his descriptions and handiwork have also blown me away. But apparently nothing actually goes dormant far enough down there? A concept difficult for me to envision; young shoots simply push off old leaves as the 'sap' always flows? Like a Fourth Dimension!

OK, let me figure this out; "Cherries are one of the easiest to graft. Cleft grafting or whip and tongue in dormant late winter" --- OK, other than the easy part (we actually do them the same as any other local fruit tree), I got that. But: "T-bud during budswell, and bark graft during early spring to bloom time..." --- To T-bud the bark must be slipping (sap flowing), but by then the buds are swelling. Once the buds begin to swell, or push, they're still viable to bud? "Up here" that's likely too fine a line; if you're where the bark's always slipping, I guess you'd only have to find a mature bud..? Our bark will often tear as our buds begin to swell. And I've never heard of using a dormant bud stick, saved (refrigerated) and budded after sap flow?

And: "You can also bark-graft cherries this summer, even T-bud during the fall." --- We T-bud in late summer, when the buds are mature, the sap's flowing, and there's time enough to bond before dormancy. By "bark-grafting cherries" - what are you using to graft? Dormant scions, 'fresh' scions, or buds? I'm not doubting anything you've accomplished; I'm actually quite amazed, but I'd hate to give the impression to those of us living where this can't be done to "go ahead and try them." Unless you're willing to field the multitude of questions as to why they didn't work " title="Wink" />

I'm also curious what you end up with as an eventual tree with all those limbs? Typically on a vase pruned tree I'll leave 4 scaffold limbs; you've 4 times that many! I realize they'll fruit on first year growth, but what about 5 years on? It almost looks as if a rotational culling would / could / should take place; plant a seedling (cheap), pepper its trunk with bud grafts, allow a couple years of production, then remove and repeat?

I felt like one of Pavlov's dogs - salivating over those photos... I tried to judge by ripeness just how far you are ahead of me, or how far south? I just thinned my Japanese plums; they're not near color, but trying! Man - if you're in CA I can certainly understand why it's so crowded! Have you plenty of water? Though the drip irrigation you described is likely the answer. Everything looks so 'clean!' Do you spray? Do you belong to a fruit-growing organization or just doing your own thing? ...I know - lot's of questions! But what do you expect after an Amazing display like that?

I'll appreciate any answers; you can even take your time. And thanks so much for answering the citrus question ... I've stopped dreaming of them ~[/quote:1i98o7a7]

Jafarj, I don't keep track much about the interstems, only the last grafted one unto the limb.

Anyway, there is still another method to keep track which is tidier than the soda cans, but then again would require mapping. It goes like the zebra stripes. You can use latex paints of different colors, then use a combination of 3 colors. If you use just 10 colors in combo of 3 stripes, you could have close to a thousand potential labeling. But i'd rather have the names directly on the tags.

This year I didn't spray anything on my stone fruits at all, and there was no diseases, but then again it was one of the driest winters we had in a long time.

I can emphatize for other members about various local problems with stone fruits, but there should be proven ones in your areas....

Most of my gages and European plums came from friends in Oregon.

Please try the Red Bavay Gage, it is a sport mutation of Bavay Green Gage. Also the Mirabelles are truly outstanding and should do well in your area. These are small fruits but small pits.

Thanks Viron an Tahir!

I will surely stick around as I would like to exchange scionwood with most of you one of these days, also share tips and tricks, for us gardeners with limited space and budget.

Several magazines have wanted to feature my yard, but then I have many projects going on, like laying the flagstones over concrete foundation which I do myself on spare time and so you know how it goes, the project gets drag on for years. Hopefully it will be done this year. Next year, I may be able to beat some guinness world record in this passion, and it will be a year after that before my wife approves of being featured.

But interviews with Robert Luhn have turned out in Podcasts, and also my grafting techniques and my trees were mentioned in the MAKE magazines.

I often give talks about growing and fruiting bananas, also how successfuly growing and producing quality citruses in cold climates.

Here's a power point presentation from one of my talks about citruses that my friend has given (could not attend that presentation, so my friend presented it for me):

http://www.chestnuts.us/JoeCitrusDay.ppt

and if you don't have power point, perhaps a PDF file from here (make sure to scroll down past advertisement in this site to get to download the PDF file):

http://www.sendspace.com/file/8kj9hb

And if anyone wants to ask about citruses, I welcome them visit the citrus forum, of which I am a site administrator (not owner):

http://citrus.forumup.org/

And I would also forward them here in case they have a question about temperate crops.

Viron,

You can order parafilm from Midwest Vinyard Supply: [url:14ajcq1r]http://www.midwestvineyardsupply.com/ProductList.asp?categoryid=25&subcatid=84&cat=Grafting+Tape&Type=True[/url:14ajcq1r]

or from Orchard Valley Supply: [url:14ajcq1r]http://www.orchardvalleysupply.com/ovsstore/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=0&idproduct=278[/url:14ajcq1r]

In either case its about $2 a roll for the 1/2" by 90' rolls that I prefer. The 1" rolls are about twice the price per length and are more cumbersome to wrap on small diameter scions.

Orchard Valley offers better pricing on a dozen rolls but Midwest has a better selection of grafting rubbers. I'm guessing you should be able to get 50-100 grafts per roll so its a couple of cents per graft. I foot of tape goes a long way because its very stretchy.

let me get back to you Viron and Jafarj later, perhaps Friday or this weekend. been very busy. So will just quickly answer Jafarj for now.

About the bark grafting grapes, yes I knew about the sap bleeding and was prepared for it. I used many large band rubber bands, and when I ran out, I cut out the inner tubes from old bike tires and used them. Then about twice a day, I would spray the sap until they dissolve, then spray alcohol over them to prevent molds. I did that for about 4 days and then it stopped bleeding. Several weeks later, my grafted cultivars were growing like crazy, even bloomed and set fruit.