No, but it’s best to have it happening sooner than later.

Bark (or "rind") grafts, my preference over cleft grafts, must wait until the bark is ‘slipping’ on the stock before they can be made. But in both cases the scion wood must be dormant.

Coltatcdp; Interesting, there must still be enough activity within the tree's structure (in your location) that cell formation continues beyond the time it slows or stops in more northern latitudes.

What kind of grafts are you making?

I’m still curious about the graft/s you’re using. I assume it’s a ‘dormant’ graft, such as a cleft, or whip & tongue. And now I’m curious where you get your dormant scion wood at that time of year – from ‘up here’?

If you have rootstock with color in the leaves it seems not all that energy heads down. Interesting …apparently enough finds its way to your graft to make the cell connections before full dormancy. Guess it makes sense that it would be ‘ready to grow’ come spring with the connections already made.

I’ve been told there’s a rush of ‘sap’ that will apparently overwhelm the delicate ‘knitting’ process necessary to callous over or connect the tissue of a dormant graft with some trees. English Walnuts seem a good example. ‘Around here’ old-timers will graft them extremely early so the cells nit before the rush of sap. Cherries seem a close second and I’ve had poor ‘takes’ on them. HOS members remind me to graft them early as well…

Apricots are nearly an Exotic here in the Willamette Valley, sad to say … so few of us bother with them. But just up our Columbia River they thrive!

I’ve been doing more bark grafts lately, but the downside is you’ve got to wait until the bark slips in spring, and keep your scion's dormant for a longer period. And, unless you can get a lot of them done in a short amount of time, you get a ‘staggered’ growth rate as the last ones grafted will lag significantly behind the first. …now if I could get my hands on some ‘dormant’ scion wood in late fall, and the bark was still slipping …that might give the results you’ve described. Hummm, scion’s from Alaska

Excellent! When you try bark grafting, the bark has to ‘slip’ clean away from the wood stock, not tear… But when it does, those slick living cells on the stock bond soooo well. If I’ve the patients and good wood, bark grafts are near 100% take on everything I’ve worked on, though by the sound of it is not quite as extensive as you. Very impressive posts, thank you!

“I have more plum rootstock than humans should be allowed to have” -- That’s great! Reminds me of a fellow I’d met in our society years ago, he’d bought a homestead that had umpteen European Plum seedlings scattered around from a one-time ‘prune orchard.’ He went nuts! It was a blast to see the menagerie he ended up with. Too bad he sold it around ten years ago ...and I’ve not checked in with the new owners, though they appear (from the road) to have left the bulk of his work. He’d leave our yearly HOS Scion Exchange with arm loads of plum scions, both Asian and European …which caused me to chuckle at your comment above - … more plum rootstock than humans should be allowed to have

Please keep us posted on your endeavors …I’m also curious what kind of trouble a fellow grafter gets into given spare time And on the serious side… maybe I, too, could/should be starting some grafting projects up this way sooner than later – great stuff!

John,

I’ve no more cherries, and was on a much smaller scale (the ‘home orchard’ thing). I had planted two ‘miss-marked’ cherry trees and got little to no production - and could only guess what varieties they actually were. I’d planted a ‘Stella,’ hoping it would pollinate them, but it died -- over a three year period, one branch at a time. My last attempt to salvage them, two, 15 year old beautifully structured cherry trees, were several multiple cleft grafts on 4 inch dia. branches (the smallest uprights they had). I split the stocks in quarters, two opposing knife cuts, and had made a trip to our HOS Arboretum for the scion wood -- but no-go. So for the last 8 years those three “cherry trees” have been Desert King fig trees, magnificent and consistent!

My most recent work with bark grafting has been a top-working project on around 60, 30 year old apple trees to cider producing varieties. There were a couple of options… One that works well is to hack off the limbs (about now), allow them to send up ‘water shoots’ from near the wounds (for a full season) – then make dormant (February up here) whip & tongue grafts the following season to those shoots. Though it leaves a large wound, the water sprouts have a perfect bond to the stock tree - and whip & tongue’s are a bullet-proof graft for apples. The project’s main problem is acquiring enough scion wood to top-work so many trees

Cleft grafts are so brutal, splitting limbs once or twice then trying to block rot from the crevasse. The lopping-off-early method at least leaves a clean stock cut, as the stock sends up it’s own replacement shoots…

Bark grafting also avoids the deep ‘cleft wounds.’ But as mentioned, doing that many trees it’s difficult to wait until the bark slips (mid April up here) sufficiently to make them. And, it’s not my profession, so I can’t devote days… only a couple of hours at best on ‘sunny spring’ evenings …or a (rare) decent weekend. Which, ‘up here,’ have been crap for the last two years. The coolest wettest Springs I can remember!

Bark grafts are so simple and allow for so many connections. I generally use the ‘crown’ and the ‘inverted L.’ The crown grafts heal the lopped off branch, as they circle it, spaced accordingly; and the inverted L’s can be plugged in to provide more ‘recovery foliage’ and an additional limb where necessary. Often tacked with a small ‘headed’ nail, or not, then sealed with simple & cheap plumber’s putty is about all that’s needed. …other than arm-loads of scion wood – which, as mentioned, is the real trick