2014 Grafting Adventures of CrazyED

[aerospacefarmer]

its a daybreak Fuji I hear they are an awesome apple

 

[CrazyEd]

Well I got the rest of the grafts planted out in my nursery tonight. Everything is greening up very nicely. We've had some nice winds too to strengthen these babies up and a decent rain over night. Tree's are packed in here tight but that is how it has to be. Some will be duds i'm sure. I think so far my best grower is a Winter Wildlife Crab that already has a good 8" of growth. If we have a warm summer that thing should easily be over 5' tall by September.

Tomorrow I plan to sprinkle an inch of dairy cow manure in here and maybe some light mulch and run a few soaker hoses through here. Looking forward to seeing how these go.

 

[leexrayshady]

Ed what are your plans if any for weed control?

 

[CrazyEd]

I will weed by hand. just like I did when I planted veggies in here. shouldn't be too bad, small area. my two keepsakes look good just broke bud.

 

[CrazyEd]

I'm also going to document all of these on paper, just incase the tags are lost. I also plan to add a layer of 36" chicken wire around the whole perimeter. In late fall I will add aluminum window screen to every tree that survives.

 

[CrazyEd]

Zestar! tbuds that i made last August look good.

 

[buckvelvet]

Nice looking nursery Ed, I hope you have some huge success when you transplant these bad dads!

 

[mikmaze]

Looking great Ed, my luck turned sour last week. I had one survivor do to my grafts not getting watered by wifey while I was away. Well I guess the wicked winter we had took care of that one, rootstock died out from under the graft. O well, hope to get back into trying this next season.

 

[dipper]

Ed what are your plans if any for weed control?

You don't need weed control when u mulch with organic material

 

[CrazyEd]

I'm actually mulching with dead grass thatch I removed from my lawn. Just a relatively thin layer, enough to keep the weeds at bay.

 

[SD51555]

Ed,

The guy in the Penn State video made it look like he just went and whacked off a bud and grafted it to another tree in the same day. Is it really that simple? If it is, why does anyone go through the trouble of storing scion wood in the fridge?

Also, from the sounds of it, I can utilize my siberian crabs as root stocks if I choose? Could that be a poor man's B118?

 

[CrazyEd]

Ed,

The guy in the Penn State video made it look like he just went and whacked off a bud and grafted it to another tree in the same day. Is it really that simple? If it is, why does anyone go through the trouble of storing scion wood in the fridge?

Also, from the sounds of it, I can utilize my siberian crabs as root stocks if I choose? Could that be a poor man's B118?

All depends on what type of grafting you are doing. If you are doing Whip & Tongue grafting, thats done in spring, the rootstock and the scions are typically dormant. If you are doing t-budding you do that around august, you need 2 things to do t-budding (bud grafting). The bark needs to slip, and you need I believe a mature bud which is actively growing, you can only store those for a very short time so they must be grafted almost immediately. That's great if you have the scions you want to graft on hand but if you are getting them from someone on the other side of the country it's not as easy. It also typically requires you to crawl around in the dirt when it's hot summer weather and the bugs are out. A t-bud might grow 12" the year that it is grafted. My bench grafts that I do in early spring can grow to 4-5' in that first growing season.

I didn't know storing scionwood was trouble? Dormant wood you can ship around and store it for weeks or months until you are ready to graft.

I like to bench graft (whip & tongue or cleft). I can do it inside over the course of a month or two when the weather is too crappy to be outside anyways. No excessive heat, no bugs, no crawling in the dirt.

 

[Turkey Creek]

Also, from the sounds of it, I can utilize my siberian crabs as root stocks if I choose? Could that be a poor man's B118?

Sure you can. You can use any "malus" for rootstock. People use siberian crabapples as rootstock on a regular basis, do a google search to find info on what qualities that rootstock offers. All I can tell you for sure is that it is cold hardy.

 

[CrazyEd]

Ed,

The wife might want that section of the fridge back. :)

Between chestnuts, acorns and scions my wife has been very patient.

take smsmith's advice and keep your scions in Your beer fridge.

 

[CrazyEd]

I went ahead and removed weak leaders on most of my grafts yesterday. I'll get some new pics this weekend, things look good. I'm North of 75% success as of now.

 

[SD51555]

Great explanation Ed. Many thanks.

 

[SD51555]

Ok, I'm inspired. Just ordered a new book to start digging deeper:

 

[CrazyEd]

Ed,

I noticed the cut area for the graft on the scions sits above the bark area by 1/2" or so. Does that area on the graft heal over well? Did you paint or wax the exposed area?

On the cleft grafts I did, I pushed the entire cut down into the cleft so there wasn't any exposed cut area. I figured it would not be as apt to dry out if it wasn't exposed.

I'm also curious what happens to the top part of the cut area on the tree? Does it develop bark and heal over?

No clue on how this works as it was my first try. i did seal everything up very well. i assume it will heal over and eventually you'll never know it was grafted. but again i'm a newb, i could have done it wrong and it will fail. time will tell. i will check tomorrow.

 

[Turkey Creek]

If you want the "bible" of grafting I reccomend "The Grafters Handbook" by RJ Garner.

 

[SD51555]

If you want the "bible" of grafting I reccomend "The Grafters Handbook" by RJ Garner.

For as old as that book is, you'd think there'd be some affordable used editions out there. I appreciate the rec. If the first book doesn't leave me properly schooled, I'll get it.