2014 Grafting Adventures of CrazyED

[CrazyEd]

Nice Ed. I had a nice older apple tree get clobbered by a large white pine this weekend. The pine had been hit by lighting Friday night and fell. I'm not sure how much damage. If it's severe I may have to cut it back and try those grafts.

honestly this is super easy stuff. just make sure you have plenty of the grafting tar stuff, glob it on thick and seal that suckers up nice. and use a bunch of scions, some will succeed, some might fail. simple as it gets.

 

[Lot2Learn]

Good question NHM.

On a related note, I was wondering if I were to use flower vials (http://amzn.to/1qFi6Fh) could I send a bud stick to a friend via FedEx and have it arrive in viable condition?

 

[dipper]

Quick question on TBud grafting. How soon do I have to do the Tbudding after I cut the branch for the bud? If I collect the bud branch on my property what should I do to keep it viable for TBudding? Will a damp paper towel, a ziploc, and a cooler (with ice?) work? Do I have 30 minutes, an hour, a day, etc?

X2, I've got my trees scouted, and have never t budded.

 

[CrazyEd]

Quick question on TBud grafting. How soon do I have to do the Tbudding after I cut the branch for the bud? If I collect the bud branch on my property what should I do to keep it viable for TBudding? Will a damp paper towel, a ziploc, and a cooler (with ice?) work? Do I have 30 minutes, an hour, a day, etc?

Here is a post from Whitetail Fanatic that was made on the other board. He's done a lot of tbudding.

"I've kept budwood in the fridge for at least 2 weeks and it's still good. You can cut budwood one day and use it to T-bud as you have time over at least the following 2 weeks if you keep the budwood wrapped in a moist paper towel in a fridge while you are not out budding. While budding, I keep a small cooler with moist towels over the top of ice and keep the budwood in that as I go from tree to tree. Make sure the budwood is not in direct contact with the ice, make sure there is plenty of towel thickness between the ice packs and the budwood. Best to have a separate small fridge to store budwood in just in case because gases given off by fruits and veggies may kill the buds, same as with storing dormant scionwood for dormant grafting. Of course, if you have your own trees to harvest budwood from, it's very easy, or if you have a source of budwood close to home or close to the site where you are doing the T-budding, then you might not have to ever store budwood in a fridge.

I've also recieved budwood in August from others through the mail and it works great. Just make sure the budwood has the leaves cut off right after harvesting it from the tree, leaving only about 1/2 to 1" of the leaf stem attached, and make sure the budwood is wrapped in moist paper towel and NOT sealed in a plastic bag or anything that can't breathe."

 

[sandbur]

I know there was a great link on here, but can't remember where.

question-when t-bud be added to the current years growth or older growth on the rootstock?

Should the t-buds come from current year's growth?

 

[CrazyEd]

New question

Say my scion had 3 buds on it when it was grafted. The bottom bud was most vigorous so I let that one grow and rubbed or snipped off the others. I now have an inch or two stub left above the new growth. When do I cut that off? Now? When they go dormant? Or next March?

I did that on mine when dormant.

 

[CrazyEd]

This link sounds like its current year growth.

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/propagation/budding/budding.html

When I tbud I take my buds from current year growth. I'll post pics in 2-3 weeks when I do tbud.

 

[CrazyEd]

Looks like a weed wacker went through my nursery tonight. Crazy amounts of hail to the point it looked like it snowed, ground was white. Hopefully it's not fatal.

 

[CrazyEd]

Here's a pic my neighbor posted on facebook. I'll try and get a few pics from the nursery today.

 

[greyphase]

Sorry to here this Matt. I went through a hail storm in the middle of June. My trees had time to put out a lot of new growth so they don't look too bad now. I believe that was the cause of the bark splitting I had on a lot of my trees, cause a lot of it was on this years growth. Apple trees are a tough lot. I sure hope they bounce back for ya.

Rick

 

[Turkey Creek]

Sorry to hear that as well. Rick I agree on that previous damage we had discussed here. Definitely wind or hail damage, my trees have not shown any permanent set backs and those wounds have started healing. Seems like it was widepread around the country this year, I have read and saw several photos of the same type of damage from a number of locations.

 

[CrazyEd]

Been a while since I posted an update or any pics so here we go. I counted casualties today, 26 that are straight up dead. The root did not grow into a tree, not quite sure whats up with that, but those are dead for sure. I think I have about 10 trees that need to be t-budded. The rest are in some state of growing. There are some trees that pretty much only grew about 4 inches, there are others pushing about 40 inches. So, I guess if i grafted 125, 26 are dead that means 89 were successful whip & tongue, or about 71%. I think thats about a 20% success rate increase over last year. I think last year I was right at about 50%.

Florina Q scions I got from Aero are by far the most vigorous. Snowsweet (2) , State Fair (2) , Hudsons Golden Gem (2), Golden Hornet (4) seemed to be common varieties that failed, not sure what the variable was there.

Last year I grew everything in 5 or 7 gallon roottrapper bags. It was so pleasant to take the failures up onto the bench and t-bud them. I don't enjoy crawling around on the ground to t-bud failures. This year everything was just planted into my nursery due to the large volume of trees. I much prefer bench grafting, as easy as tbudding is i'll take bench grafting all day long. I t-budded about 8 trees between yesterday and today. I grafted 1 honeycrisp and the rest were various local wild crabapple trees. I also pulled some teflon tape off a bunch of trees to see how the wounds look.

 

[CrazyEd]

Some are not the prettiest grafts but as long as they make it thats all I care about. In a year or two you wont even see the scar

 

[Lot2Learn]

I'm almost positive that the Golden Hornet I sent you was from the only tree that I got from Cummins that just died from the get-go, so that's not a reflection of your grafting prowess.

I'll have some GH wood to send again next Spring to try again.

 

[CrazyEd]

 

[CrazyEd]

Here's a few shots of my nursery. apple trees and rogue cukes

Nice looking zestar

 

[greyphase]

Hey Matt

Just figured up that I had a success rate of 76% 96 attempts-81 successful. That's plenty good enough for me as I hope to get as many in the ground this fall as possible:eek:. Most of my failures were on Antonovka rootstock that I had overwintered in pots above ground. They must have been frozen by the extreme winter as they did not put up any growth from the rootstock. I also lost 3 Antonovka rootstock trees that I had overwintered in pots but only 1 B118 rootstock tree that I overwintered. Florina Q is also my best growing graft this year.

Rick

 

[aerospacefarmer]

Ed

Am happy those Florina Querina scions worked for you. My biggest grower is yellow delicious I have planted 14 grated trees so far and will do another 6 tomorrow. We had a great rain last week so I am hoping the latest 5 planted do well

 

[CrazyEd]

Here's a few pics I took at my dads house saturday from that grafting project. It's looking real good. I'll probably thin a few of these out next year but we have all sorts of options between the 3 different varieties.

 

[CrazyEd]