Northamerican Alied Fruit Experimenters

Northamerican Alied Fruit Experimenters
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Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Re: [nafex] Plum Grafting / Budding

On 3/23/2016 7:36 AM, Peter Chrisbacher wrote:
> Thank you both, gentlemen, for your helpful advice! I've heard
> anecdotally that grafting plums is possible (and one of the guys at
> the BYFG grafting meeting told me "ALL my plum grafts took last year!
> I just did normal grafts!" without providing any helpful details).
>
> I grafted three last night (splice) on actively growing 1 YO in-ground
> rootstock with dime-size leaves. Most of the leaves were high up the
> leader, so they ended up getting cut off. I'm assuming (hoping) the
> roots will just continue pushing into the scion now if my grafts are
> any good. I wrapped tightly but not excessively with a budding
> rubber, then parafilm, including a single-wrap covering of the lowest
> scion bud to keep it from drying out (2 buds on each scion). Tree-cote
> to seal the exposed scion cut.
>
Pete,

Thank you Fluffy for your concurrence. Let me add 2 more " by the ways,"
and an observation.

Storing cherry scion's in a normal refrigeration for any length of time
can lead to a problem. 40° to 45° is too warm, it approximates the
outdoor temperature when cherry flower buds become active. Likewise they
will do that in the refrigerator at those temperatures and will be too
active when grafting reducing the success rate. Store cherry scion wood
as close to the freezing temperature as you can to keep it fully
dormant. My scion storage refrigerator has been modified and it will
actually frost in the bottom where the coldest air settles and a little
frost will not hurt a fully dormant piece of scion wood. At least I have
never detected damage to scion wood that has been lightly frosted. I
would not stored in a deep-freeze where the temperature can get down to
near 0 because if any activity had begun in the scion wood, the cells
filling with water, the cells could burst damaging the wood.

I have often grafted using the splice graft or machine graft and pulled
the rubber band as tight as I can. You would think it could constrict
the activity but certainly in persimmon and pawpaw I've not seen a
problem. It will girdle the graft sooner because there is less
elasticity left for expansion. As soon as the graft has calloused and
begun growth simply cut the rubber band in one or 2 places and there is
no need to remove it as now the expanding calloused area is not
restricted. Again I cover the entire scion wood starting below the graph
point with Parafilm, no need to fool around with wax or anything else.
Simply expand (stretch it out approximately double length) the Parafilm
start below the graft union keep wrapping all the way up and pitch it
off above the scion or continue back down until you run out of Parafilm.
Anything that I have ever grafted pushes right through it, and I've made
many many grafts of many species.

In my opinion wrapping tightly is important. I believe the 2 cambium
layers must be pulled and held together in order to callous, especially
in hardwood such as nut trees which would include harder wood of the
plum family. Plum wood is much more dense than cherry. I've had people
tell me they have successfully grafted using masking tape to hold the
understock and scion together and I have no doubt that can work. But I
firmly believe to increase your success percentage, wrap the graft union
tight. Jerry

A persimmon button pushing through Parafilm.

As IBIBLIO often sees pictures as spam ( numerous times I've been
removed from the list for sending pictures) and IBIBLIO doesn't include
the sender I have no way of knowing if this was passed through and if
I'm still allowed on the net. Would someone let me know via direct email
that the picture came through.
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