My neighbor has a great tasting apple tree that is hollow from a boring beetle and I was asked if I could cut it down before it splits and falls on their house. I obliged and cut it down and hauled it away to my other neighbors to burn it. I snipped off some 1 year growth that was fully leafed out and took them home and grafted them onto some b118s that failed and 2 g30s that the mice girdled from the orchard. Has anyone ever grafted this late? What is the success rate on this?
Grafting after leaf out?
- Thread starter Spur
- Start date
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
I have tried and failed as well. Very tough under the conditions you described. Did you remove all if not most of the leaf blades? The best you can hope for is that there is a dormant bud that would break after the scion has begun to callus. The green leaves require too much energy to maintain them until the graft can take.
Update on this post. All of these grafts took and put on around 18" of growth. Even though the scions were fully leafed out, they still healed well. So even if you are very late grafting after leaf out, go ahead and graft them because the rootstock and scion are very resilient.
