Sex Change Operation - Transfered from QDMA forum

yoderjac

5 year old buck +
A.K.A. Persimmon Bark Grafting
We have one very prolific female persimmon tree on our property and another that occasionally produces fruit. However, we have many male persimmon trees.
In QW vol 17-6 and 18-2, Dave Osborne and Dr. Miller provide instructions for using scions from a productive female tree for bark grafting with a male tree to effectively change the sex of the tree making it bare fruit. (http://www.qdma.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Grafting-Persimmons.pdf)
Yesterday, I collected and stored a bunch of scions from our productive female tree. I plan to cut down all but one of the male trees in each little cluster and graft these scions to them.
Has anyone else tried this? What are your experiences? I'd appreciate any insight before I make my first attempt.
 
Smallplot;472215 said:
Jack you may get a better response posting this in the native habitat section. Catchy title though. :D

You may be right, but even though persimmons are native, I see most of the fruit tree posts over here.
 
mikmaze;472247 said:
sounds like a good idea, but I would leave 2 males, just in case. I found a stand of persimmon by me and did not see a single fruit on it, or under it. this was 3 weeks ago so not sure if it would have been holding stillor not, but could be just like your spot, all males.
You can wait until spring when they flower to determine which, if any, are males.
 
whitetail fanatic;472315 said:
I wonder if persimmons can be t-budded like apples? If so, that is something I will definitely be interested in if I can get them to grow here. I have a bunch of seedlings I'm planting out this spring that I grew from seed from Oikos last summer in the garden. I have a bunch more seed to plant this spring. My uncle has been growing them successfully and has about a dozen producing good amounts of fruit for about 4 years now. He's only about 30 miles south of us and they made it through temp as low as -25 F to -30 F during several winters between 2007 to 2011, so I hope they can make it. They say to expect about 50/50 male to female when growing from seed, so if mine make it, then some day I will try converting most of the males to females, especially if t-budding will work.
whitetail fanatic;472322 said:
I did a quick google search and it brought up plenty of sites that talk about t-budding persimmon, so it sounds like that should work.
whitetail fanatic;472324 said:
Here's a question for those of you who have persimmons growing in your area. If you take a persimmon tree that is like 10 to 15 years old, or about 3" to 5" in diameter, and cut the tree off about 4 feet above ground level, will it send up a new shoot of growth from that trunk? That new shoot of growth would make a perfect place to graft or t-bud to.
 
whitetail fanatic;472324 said:
Here's a question for those of you who have persimmons growing in your area. If you take a persimmon tree that is like 10 to 15 years old, or about 3" to 5" in diameter, and cut the tree off about 4 feet above ground level, will it send up a new shoot of growth from that trunk? That new shoot of growth would make a perfect place to graft or t-bud to.
I've never done any grafting before. It appears from the article that you don't need to wait for a new shoot and t-bud, but you can cut of a persimmon (up to 4" in diameter) and directly bark graft the scion to it.
 
mikmaze;472427 said:
I was thinking of leaving two males not based on not being sure if it was indeed a male, but more along the lines of what if I leave one and it dies? :eek:
whitetail fanatic;472492 said:
Yep, the only reason I asked is because I like t-budding so much more than grafting since it is so easy, that's why I was just wondering if they readily send up a new shoot if you cut them off. I think they do, from what I've read about them on here. Just wondering if anyone could confirm that. For t-budding apples, I like the earliest growth from the current year, or 1 year old wood, 1/4" to 3/4" diameter. I'm assuming it would be the same for persimmons.
Trophy Doe;472494 said:
fanatic,
I've heard t-budding works, but from what I've read chip budding seems to be preferred.
 
mikmaze;472427 said:
I was thinking of leaving two males not based on not being sure if it was indeed a male, but more along the lines of what if I leave one and it dies? :eek:
That is a good point in general. In my case, the persimmons are all along a pipeline ROW. There are about a half dozen clusters along about a half mile of pipeline. I'm talking about leaving one male per cluster. I'm sure all these clusters cross-pollinate.
 
mikmaze;472616 said:
you are lucky to have so many, I now know of three areas with trees, only saw fruit on two of them. I never have luck planting bare root, they all seem to die.

These are not planted, they grew naively.
 
I asked Dave Osborn, one of the authors of the article I previously posted the link for, a few questions. He was nice enough to give me a call back tonight. We had a very nice chat and he was very helpful.
Here are some of the things I took away from the conversation:
• You can use two or 3 scions on a single trunk to start, but if more than one establish, you need to choose the most vigorous and prune off the others.
• Grafting using scions from a wild tree can be problematic because the small diameter of the scions makes it difficult to line up the cambium layers.
• Dave has no experience with trying trees greater than 4” in diameter but thinks it could be problematic.
• Fertilizing these is a good idea for the first two years, but once they start to fruit, you need to be careful when you fertilize. Bad timing can suppress fruiting.
• It is very important to protect the grafts with aluminum foil from the south and west sun.
• It is very important to pinch off limbs that will start below the graft.
• Grafting higher is better. While deer don’t browse persimmons much, Dave says they will sometimes pull them down out of curiosity. Five foot is a good target height.
• It is very important to loosely tie the grafted scion to a support so that birds don’t perch on it and break it off.
• There may be a high failure rate with our small diameter scions, but this is not a long-term problem. The tree will not die even if the graft does not establish. We can simply cut off a few more inches and try again the following year.
• Once we have a cultivated tree, we will be able to use scions from it which will be larger in diameter.
• Pruning an established female tree will cause it to produce larger diameter scions in future years and will also help fruiting. We should prune established females next winter.
• We should see the first fruits in about 2 years after we establish a graft. We will only get one or two fruit that year, but it should increase after that.
• We should perform the grafting between May 10th and early July.
Thanks,
Jack
 
whitetail fanatic;475603 said:
Thanks Jack. Did he mention anything about t-budding persimmons? I would like to see what he says about that. From what I've read about it, I think it can be done, but it would be nice to hear from someone more directly than just reading about it. Anyway we could get his email address?
thanks

We did not discuss t-budding. He published his email address in the "About the Authors" block in the article I posted.
 
Well, I may my first attempt at doing the sex change operation today. Here is how it went:
Here is the first cluster of trees before I started:
020875cc-3ef8-43d7-bf2c-36ac50a65e41.jpg

The trees are just starting to flower. I was able to confirm that all trees in this cluster were male. I selected the north most tree which was pretty well formed to be the pollinator and left it alone. I then used a chainsaw to daylight the cluster a bit and then cut all trees but the one I selected at about chest height. I had to cut some of the smaller trees a bit lower to get a relatively straight trunk.
186fb4c1-a194-43d3-846a-23785b74af96.jpg

Next, I separated a slice of bark from the wood on the trunk:
57b78c42-f4f1-46b9-bae1-82ed5eb2164f.jpg

I then selected one of the scions that I collected from the female tree before it broke dormancy and stored in my refrigerator.
dd8d1050-2c33-4e3c-8012-f021c579fcb7.jpg
 
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I prepared it by making an angled cut on one side and scraping the bark to expose the cambium layer.
fb75a687-1ec0-452b-9deb-79fa79728d78.jpg

I then inserted this into the slot I made in the trunk and repeated it for two more scions distributed evenly around the trunk.
f105206b-ff83-4159-9777-5bf5b725ade7.jpg

I used 8" grafting rubbers to secure the grafts. These worked fine on smaller trees, but were a little on the short side for larger diameter trees.
83e30894-ba1d-4eff-b783-cf09d3a5a5a5.jpg

Next I used grafting seal to cover the wound and graft openings:
6cb9f342-bc25-466a-97b6-d66c50d89aa1.jpg
 
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After the grafting seal dried, I applied parafilm to further protect the graft:
69f6b24a-3e5e-4a5b-ba27-cea28ccd5096.jpg

Here is the cluster when the grafting is complete:
492e90ee-2260-486d-8194-a48cd71fc2e9.jpg

The last thing I did was to install the sun shields:
94c32c81-2d9b-4b12-a575-eeb82d9ae34a.jpg

I did not install any supports. I plan to do that next weekend. I did a total of 10 trees in three clusters. I will report back as things progress.
Thanks,
Jack
 
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banc123;493980 said:
The old guy, actually he just passed away:( , at the farm we camp out did all kinds of grafting and transplanting of fruit treas with great success over the past 60 yrs on the farm. Just passing conversations about it, but I remember him saying he only did it when the size of the branch/tree relieving the graph was young/small.
It will be interesting to see if one that large works out. Great experiment.
36racin;494020 said:
Jack,
When do persimmions put on fruit? I checked out my trees last week at the camp and didn't see any fruit developing yet. I may have overlooked them though.
 
Rockin' G Ranch;494010 said:
What is a "sun shield"? Why did you think it was needed?
Good luck with your grafts. I've been grafting pear trees with pretty good results. I have never used or heard of a sun shield. Thanks.
The sun shield idea came from the article. When I spoke with Dave, he said it was important. The idea is to keep the graft from drying out. It only take a minute to apply. It is simply aluminum foil with a piece of electrical tape holding it to the tree.
I don't know if this is specific to persimmons or not. I'm just learning.
 
36racin;494020 said:
Jack,
When do persimmions put on fruit? I checked out my trees last week at the camp and didn't see any fruit developing yet. I may have overlooked them though.
Persimmons are very late trees which makes them pretty reliable. They are not susceptible to late frosts and other early spring surprises. This has been an unusual spring in VA, but I don't think it has affected the persimmons much.
My persimmons are just getting ready to bloom. They are leafed out and the blossoms have formed on most trees. This allows me to sex them. The blossoms have not yet opened to make the trees easy to identify from a distance, but I predict that they will be open by next weekend. They won't fruit until after the blossoms open and they pollinate.
I usually start seeing green persimmons forming in mid summer.
 
La. habitat guy;494214 said:
I'm in Louisiana. If the trees are old enough,and female, the fruit is on the trees now. Look closely, they are green and same color as the leaves.

That could very well be, you are south of me. Also this thread is referring to wild common persimmon trees (AKA American Persimmon). Timing for Japanese or other cultivates may be different.
 
mikmaze;472247 said:
sounds like a good idea, but I would leave 2 males, just in case. I found a stand of persimmon by me and did not see a single fruit on it, or under it. this was 3 weeks ago so not sure if it would have been holding stillor not, but could be just like your spot, all males.
Someone was nice enough to post a great example picture of sexing persimmon trees: http://www.qdma.com/forums/showthread.php?p=494376&posted=1#post494376
 
Pictures about one week after grafting (5/25/2012). No visible indication of acceptance or rejection.
c7e3cb53-fb4f-47d9-aa4a-2c0c9461945d.jpg

d43271fa-b040-4d27-9d35-44c880a93796.jpg

68323b14-cc84-40df-8696-7945878676bd.jpg

The good news is that I found another cluster of persimmons all about the right size for grafting. Looks like they are all males.
Thanks,
Jack
 
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fshafly2;495717 said:
Jack
Thanks for posting this info! I have some very productive wild females that I will try to propagate on some male trunks.
-fsh
 
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