Sex Change Operation - Transfered from QDMA forum

[yoderjac]

Jack,
This Thread disturbs me, everytime I see it get to the forefront of the thread discussions. I have yet to get over it's title. :eek: :p

Are the pictures to explicit for you? :D
I think you can set the parental controls on your computer so dirty words are filtered out. :D

 

[yoderjac]

I thought folks might want to see a composite of the same tree from week to week:

 

[yoderjac]

That sure does look impressive for a first try Jack. I've been grafting and budding up a storm this year and persimmon has been by far the easiest and most forgiving. What everyone with experience says is correct in that the grafting part is a piece of cake but the aftercare is what makes or breaks you. Congrats

Good point on the after care. And speaking of after care, I have some questions about pruning. When I last talked to Dave Osborne about grafting and using more than one scion per tree, he suggested it was a good idea to use more than one on larger trees because some would not take but that in the end, I would only keep one.
I'm now having second thoughts about that approach and I'd like to hear some other opinions. Some of the reading I've done suggest persimmons are often pruned with an open center like peaches rather than a central leader like apples. If that is the case, would it not be better to keep all of the scions that took and use them as the structural branches?
How are others pruning persimmons, open vase or central leader? Any other thoughts on pruning? I guess I have until winter to decide.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Today, I removed the grafting rubbers from all the trees to prevent girdling. Here are the latest pics:

Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Ok, here is a question for folks who have done this before: Are there issues with parafilm girdling the scions? When I checked my trees today, the parafilm seemed to be doing just that. When I removed it, you could still the sprial in the scion. So, I removed all the parafilm from the scions. I knew you were supposed to remove the grafting rubbers after a month or so, but I never read anything about removing the parafillm.
Trees are still looking good. Here are this week's pics:

 

[yoderjac]

I have a huge supply of persimmon trees available to me but have a question. I have never tried to do any kind of grafting, and have no idea how to collect scions. Can someone explain please.
About 8 or 9 years ago I mentioned to a friend at work that I had a persimmon in my back yard that produced a ton of fruit every year. A couple days later he asked if I used the fruit. I told him I really didn't, I just left them there for the deer. It turns out his wife used to make a great persimmon pudding but after they moved she didn't have a supply of persimmon around.
I let her have all she wanted. (In exchange for some of the best pudding I've ever eaten :) I asked her to save me all the seeds. These seeds I spread around in a friends old pasture he was letting grow wild. Now there are literally hundreds of persimmon trees on the 16 acres, but we've found 40 females producing fruit. He has told me I can cut all the scions I want, I just don't know how to collect them, or when. I have found about 20 trees on my property, but only the one is a female.

On the first page of this thread, I referenced a QW article. That is what I used for a guide. It is available online: http://www.qdma.com/uploads/pdf/Grafting-Persimmons.pdf
This thread documents my attempt to follow those directions with pictures after each step of grafting and weekly pictures of the results.

 

[yoderjac]

Jack I would follow Dave's lead and prune back to one main. Long term I doubt you want 3-4 mains all callusing over the stump at the same spot in fear it would become a weak link. I removed the rubbers and buddy tape/p-film very early on some and left others to slough off. The ones I removed fairly early turned out fine and actually seemed to heal over "prettier". As far as pruning goes I'd let it go au naturale so it can become a tree again.

I noticed some of the growth at the end of your most recent flush appears stunted. Check under the leaves for a whitish film and little clear egg looking things... you may have psyllids. They don't really bother older trees but you may wanna keep em in check for the first year or two. Acephate works good to keep them at bay.

Nicely done. I really like the timeline photos .
Jhoss

 

[yoderjac]

Trophy Doe,
I think you are right on following Dave's lead. That is what I plan to do. I think next time, I'll remove the parafilm earlier. The central leader system makes sense and I have since found out that some of the reading I was doing about pruning was referring to Asian persimmons. I have not seen any whitish film under the leaves, but I'll be sure to take a close look this weekend.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Well, it has been one more week. This week I removed the solar shields. In hindsight, I think I should have done this earlier. The bark under the solar shields is black and on at least two of my trees I had ants living under there. After removing the shields, I sprayed the bark with permanone. I figure that if it has been compromised, this will make it less attractive to insects until it can heal.
Also, i decided to do a little experiment. I realize you are supposed to wait until trees go dormant to prune, but on my tree with the largest rootstock, the scions seemed to really be competing with each other. So, I decided to select a scion and terminate the rest.
Here are the pics:

The tree above was grafted a week later than all the others. It was the only tree in that cluster that took. It seems to have caught up and even surpassed many of the others.

The first picture above is the one on the largest rootstock before pruning and the second is after pruning.

Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Another week and not much change:

 

[yoderjac]

Well, it has been another week. The growing season for persimmons must be coming to an end. I have not noticed much growth in the last couple weeks and there were very few water sprouts to remove. Here are the latest pics:

 

[yoderjac]

The latest composite picture of the progress of one tree:

 

[yoderjac]

It is now January 20th 2013 and my grafted persimmons are dormant. Today I decided to prune them. I removed all but a singly scion from trees where more than one took. I then pruned for form. I pruned a little differently than you do with most fruit trees. Normally you have a single tree to worry about but with grafted persimmons, I often have multiple rootstock growing a few feet from each other since persimmons tend to cluster. So, when I prune two trees that are close together, I'm trying to organize the branches to fill as much area as I can without growing into each other. Here are the pruned trees:

 

[yoderjac]

I then took the trimmings and tried to make cuttings and propagate them. Here is one of the cuttings:

Here are ten of them planted in rootmaker 18-cell trays:

 

[yoderjac]

Interesting to see what happens with the cuttings.If you end up with clones or not.I planted a bunch of seeds in a propagation bed about a week ago.Hopefully try some bench bare root grafting next year.Went with the beds because of the ammount of seed.Have some in pots also and some wild males for sex change.May have to try some cuttings also you use rooting hormone?

The question is whether or not I can successfully get the cutting to root and flourish, not whether or not they will be clones. They will be. These cuttings are from common persimmons. If they grow, they should produce trees with similar characteristics to the parent.

 

[yoderjac]

Thats actually what I ment.Hope they work out!

 

[yoderjac]

It is now February 10th and it has been about 3 weeks since I planted the cuttings. The top growth was clearly slow and I hope the heating pad under the cell technique helped with root development. Today, some of the buds started swelling. With the cell sitting directly in a solid flat, there is not air flow below the cell for root pruning. So, I figured it was time to move them from the window seal with the heating pad to the greenhouse. Hopefully this will speed overall development of the trees.
I took a closeup picture of a couple of them. Here they are:

 

[yoderjac]

Great read thanks for all the pictures and the great detail of what you have done if you have time please keep this thread going this spring and summer
Mike

Mike,
Thanks. I hope to keep it going. Here are my tree related plans for this year:
- I just finished pruning some Kieffer pear trees.
- In late Feb I plan to prune my mature female persimmon trees. I'll use the trimming from those as scions.
- TickRancher has graciously offered to send me some of his trimmings from some improved varieties.
-If the persimmon clones in the picture above actually survive, I plan to keep them in rootmaker container, increasing the size at least through this summer and I may try to keep them a second growing season before planting.
-When the sap starts to run in the spring, I plan to do the same thing as last year converting more male trees to female. I'll use both the improved variety and my common persimmon scions and keep track of each.
- After spring growth starts, I plan to take some green scions from my Tigertooth jujube trees (grown on their own rootstock) and see if I can start them as cuttings.
-I have a couple silverhill jujube trees on order. These are large and are intended to help with pollination of my existing trees.
-I'll be planting some of the elderberries I started indoors.
-I have over 100 Dunstan chestnuts I started from seed that we will be planting directly from rootmaker cells this spring.
-I have over 50 Dunstan chestnuts that I plan to keep in rootmakers all summer and plant in the fall.
This thread will focus on the persimmons, and I'll have other threads that address the other projects.
This is the year of the tree for me!
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

It is now Feb 27th. Several of the Persimmon cuttings have died but others are still chugging along. Here is a recent pic:

This weekend I plan to prune my mature persimmon trees and take scions for more sex change operations this spring.

 

[yoderjac]

It is now March 6th. Most of the persimmons I tried to start have died. I only have two left that are still green. I knew this was a low percentage operation going in, but I wanted the learning experience. I have just ordered a cloning machine to help with hard to root cuttings like persimmons in the future.
Last weekend I pruned my mature persimmon trees. I pulled a handful of scions from my most prolific female tree. Mostly I just cut the branches growing down and out into the field, but I also took off some of the dead branches and some that were growing back into the tree. I was pretty conservative. Next I headed to our other female persimmon to prune it. That tree is very misshapen due to the fact it was growing through the cedar until we removed it. I took all of the downward growing branches and tried to clean it up best I could. It will never have proper form, but hopefully this will improve fruiting. I also took a few scions from it. On the way home, I stopped at a friends place and cut some scions from one of his prolific female trees.
Today I received some PROK and 100-45 scions from TickRancher. Special thanks to him for letting me try some other varieties. I've stored them in the vegetable crisper with my other scions. Now, I'm just waiting for the spring to break to do some more grafting!