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topworking question
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fritz
8 Posts
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1
March 23, 2011 - 7:58 pm

I have been experimenting with grafting over the last few years, teaching myself since no one I know around me does this sort of thing. Before totally working over a couple trees, I did a few trial grafts - with (some) success! Well, until my 2 1/2 year old daughter recently broke off one of the top worked grafts that took last year (all my fault for teaching her to climb). So my question is: can I cut another couple inches off the tree branch that I had grafted to, and just do it again? I plan to work over the entire tree, but it seems a waste to not use this one really nice branch. Moose have also nibbled the tips off some other grafts, but I was planning to just let those be.

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Viron
1409 Posts
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March 23, 2011 - 10:25 pm

Moose …that’s a new one around here! What, railroad ties and re-bar to protect your trees..? -- If the limb in question is still alive, graft it over somewhere below the prior cut. Don’t know what season this happened, but if it was dormant that limb should be alive and ready to graft. If it happened during the growing season I’d scrape the bark near the prior graft … going down until I found live ‘green’ cells under and completely around the limb.

Another thing, if you did nothing - the tree would likely send up ‘latent’ buds from near the damage and several ‘shoots’ might emerge. Those are easy to (whip & tongue) graft to the following year… But if the limb still shows life (all the way around) and you’re comfortable with a dormant graft - and you have some viable scions, now would be a great time to repair it.

…as for the Moose … I can think of one unemployed politician said to hunt them – give her a call, perhaps a Moose call :mrgreen:

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fritz
8 Posts
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March 24, 2011 - 6:20 am

Thanks Viron! This just happened last week, so still dormant. The grafted scion from last year didn't completely break off - I bent it back straight and taped it up right away (with my little girl's help, of course!), but was thinking that it might be better just to start over. This weekend I am going to re-work the whole tree. Exciting!

I live in Moscow, Idaho, and moose are a serious problem in the late fall and winter. They are mostly interested in the wood, and eat everything up to about a pinkie in diameter. I don't let them hang out for long (chase them off with rubber 12 ga slugs from Fish and Game, cracker shells, slingshots - I have even popped them in the head with a big Granny Smith!), but in short time they can kill a new tree. It's usually a cow and calf or two, so also pretty dangerous - one of our dogs came oh-so-close to getting stomped once when I didn't check out the yard and let them out. I put up a circle of hog wire, 2 "stories" (about 7-8 feet) high around my young trees. We have Elk too, but so far have been lucky and the winter herd (about 50 of them) in the area has not stumbled across my place.

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