JERRED GRACEY
5 year old buck +
when you go from the 5 gallon bucket to the nursery, do your trees show any signs of stress?
2014 Grafting Adventures of CrazyED
- Thread starter CrazyEd
- Start date
CrazyEd
5 year old buck +
No.
Probably helps we had some really nice cool weather for a good 10 days and they were planted in high quality loose soil. I also took them outside to get acclimated probably 5-6 times on really nice days, but kept them mostly out of direct sun prior to the transplant.
buckvelvet
5 year old buck +
Nice work on those Tbuds Matt!
CrazyEd
5 year old buck +
I had a bit of extra time on my hands this past weekend, and had a bunch of scions left over so I went through my nursery and cleft grafted over about 20 b118 rootstocks that were grown into trees. These trees were failed W&T grafts from last year. More Northern Spy, Sansa, Honeycrisp, Liberty, Enterprise, Florina Q, Kerr.
CrazyEd
5 year old buck +
My young grafts are looking awesome. My success rate is probably 60-70%. In all honesty I dont mind loosing a few here and there, get rid of the runts.
Heat wave coming through this week. I'll keep these guys well watered daily and they will grow like crazy. The tallest ones grafted in April are probably over 24" now, really some nice looking trees in here and again lots of diversity with a big focus on crabs.
Heat wave coming through this week. I'll keep these guys well watered daily and they will grow like crazy. The tallest ones grafted in April are probably over 24" now, really some nice looking trees in here and again lots of diversity with a big focus on crabs.
buckvelvet
5 year old buck +
Matt, you leave all your Tape on again this year. I have to remove the tape on my last year grafts as there seems to be a bit of girdling going on with caliper size. I am contemplating removing the tape on my this year grafts but I am not sure yet.
CrazyEd
5 year old buck +
I usually cut it off in August/September/before winter. once I know everything is pretty well healed up. One quick cut with a razor blade usually does the trick.
It's like taking a bandaid off, getting the wound out in the fresh air I think helps it too. But I usually wait at least until august to make sure everything is nice and solid.
buckvelvet
5 year old buck +
Oh ok, nice, Mine do have treekote over the tape so I'm wondering how much of a bugger that will be to get off.
CrazyEd
5 year old buck +
Mine is usually just plumbers tape with a coat of wax over it. A razor usually does the trick, just take your time and go slow, and dont cut too deep. Then peel it back slowly with your finger nail or the corner of your knife, just make sure you dont rip up a bunch of bark. I would think even if you get a good slit you probably dont have to remove the tape all the way, a nice clean slice should prevent the girdle, and the tree should grow and the tape will eventually fall off.
buckvelvet
5 year old buck +
Ohh good call, never thought of just opening up that graft a bit, nice!
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
I started taking the tape off mine. I have started losing some I grafted on some 1/2" caliper M111 using cleft grafts. I took tape off a couple that are starting to fail and found some fungus and dead wood on the rootstock around the cleft. The grafts looked nicely healed otherwise. Those clefts are big wounds to heal, especially when the scionwood was big too. I'll take tape off now and see if that helps. I won't buy that big rootstock again for bench grafting.
greyphase
5 year old buck +
:eek::eek::eek:. Wow Ed. Their really looking good. :cool: :cool: Other projects led me astray this spring and I neglected my nursery some what. An aphid invasion stunted many of my trees until I realized what was happening. A good spraying with sevin and they are making a comeback.
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Corey Peterson
5 year old buck +
I can say after starting my own nursery this year I am truly impressed with the success of Ed's nursery. The trees in my nursery aren't nearly as nice looking I think i need to be more aggressive with the watering and keep up better with spraying - I also had an aphid issue that hurt them. I'll probably also send in a soil sample to see what I'm missing.
CrazyEd
5 year old buck +
Thanks Corey. I honestly don't spray very often, I should probably spray more. But i do try and keep a close eye on my trees and react as needed. All i spray is Sevin. Jap beetles have been showing up more and more lately, but dont seem to be doing too much damage.
I do grow in top quality compost and I do water a lot, it takes me 5 minutes to basically spray down the whole nursery really well, I do have a soaker hose but dont use it much because it takes too long, I only water the bare ground, not the leaves. Recently I have been watering every day, especially with the heat that is coming the next few days. As you can see my trees are really really packed in, but they still do pretty darn good.
I do grow in top quality compost and I do water a lot, it takes me 5 minutes to basically spray down the whole nursery really well, I do have a soaker hose but dont use it much because it takes too long, I only water the bare ground, not the leaves. Recently I have been watering every day, especially with the heat that is coming the next few days. As you can see my trees are really really packed in, but they still do pretty darn good.
buckvelvet
5 year old buck +
CE, looking good my man!
I have sprayed my 1st year grafts in my nursery twice, once in June, once in Jule Seven/Imidan. I will spray one more time in a week or 2 with IMidan/Captan and I'll call it a year for spraying. I don't know how you get 90% of you trees that tall, I have maybe 20% that are that freakin tall in the 1st year but the rest are living well just not THAT well. Sheesh!
I have sprayed my 1st year grafts in my nursery twice, once in June, once in Jule Seven/Imidan. I will spray one more time in a week or 2 with IMidan/Captan and I'll call it a year for spraying. I don't know how you get 90% of you trees that tall, I have maybe 20% that are that freakin tall in the 1st year but the rest are living well just not THAT well. Sheesh!
CrazyEd
5 year old buck +
Yeah I dont know why some of them are insane. They're not all like that. It just seems like in every class of trees (I graft 100 annually) there are always some that are crazy vigorous, and others that are not. The crazy ones stick out, the ones that are not are lost in the sea of giants.
My hunch is it may have to do with the quality or lack of quality of the actual graft. I also notice that those few tbuds are just beautiful. There is a noticeable difference when you have a tbud just breaking dormacy late march that is already healed vs a fresh whip & tongue or cleft graft. The buds are a lot more vigorous probably because they have a nice established root system feeding the tree.
But for me it's a balance. Every fall I go through all of my trees and identify which ones will go to the farm in spring for planting and which ones will stay another year or more of nursing. This method basically keeps me setup to have a steady flow of 30-50 trees for planting every spring, which is just about the right number for us. It's manageable.
One other thing I did this year, back in june. I basically cleft grafted a bunch of trees that failed to graft last year. They grew into 4-6' whips, B118 rootstocks. Early june I had a bunch of scion left over, I just went out there and cut them all off at like 2' off the ground and cleft'd them. That actually worked out really well, some of those things have already grown 12" or more. I think it's important to try and utilize your failures, either through t-budding or clefting like I did. I think i like this cleft grafting on the failures better than the t-budding. The tbudding is a hassle getting down on the ground.
I have 4 trees on G30/B9 in my backyard at home. 1 zestar!, 1 sweet 16, 1 honeycrisp and one Cortland. This spring i also turned a few of them into frankentrees. I have limited space, can't plant more trees, so what do I do to add more varieties. Add a branch of this, add a branch of that. It's fun and I basically had 100% success. I easily added Liberty, Florina Q, Wolf River, Northern Spy, and Kerr to 3 trees. I'll probably add a few more varieties next year. here's a picture of one of the grafts which I pulled the tape off today. I think this was done mid to late may, looks great and already grew about 14".
My hunch is it may have to do with the quality or lack of quality of the actual graft. I also notice that those few tbuds are just beautiful. There is a noticeable difference when you have a tbud just breaking dormacy late march that is already healed vs a fresh whip & tongue or cleft graft. The buds are a lot more vigorous probably because they have a nice established root system feeding the tree.
But for me it's a balance. Every fall I go through all of my trees and identify which ones will go to the farm in spring for planting and which ones will stay another year or more of nursing. This method basically keeps me setup to have a steady flow of 30-50 trees for planting every spring, which is just about the right number for us. It's manageable.
One other thing I did this year, back in june. I basically cleft grafted a bunch of trees that failed to graft last year. They grew into 4-6' whips, B118 rootstocks. Early june I had a bunch of scion left over, I just went out there and cut them all off at like 2' off the ground and cleft'd them. That actually worked out really well, some of those things have already grown 12" or more. I think it's important to try and utilize your failures, either through t-budding or clefting like I did. I think i like this cleft grafting on the failures better than the t-budding. The tbudding is a hassle getting down on the ground.
I have 4 trees on G30/B9 in my backyard at home. 1 zestar!, 1 sweet 16, 1 honeycrisp and one Cortland. This spring i also turned a few of them into frankentrees. I have limited space, can't plant more trees, so what do I do to add more varieties. Add a branch of this, add a branch of that. It's fun and I basically had 100% success. I easily added Liberty, Florina Q, Wolf River, Northern Spy, and Kerr to 3 trees. I'll probably add a few more varieties next year. here's a picture of one of the grafts which I pulled the tape off today. I think this was done mid to late may, looks great and already grew about 14".
Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
Do you guys ALL remove the grafting tape from your grafts ?? I thought grafting tape broke down on it's own in sunlight ?? Am I missing something ??
