yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I grafted a bunch of persimmons that were thin this year and last year. Some of the rootstock was even smaller than the scion itself. I used several methods: whip and tongue, cleft, and flap grafting that Cliff England does (I think that's the name). I even bud grafted one as an experiment. I'm not sure if it's supposed to work this early in the season, but it did. I just wanted to throw that out there in case someone didn't want to wait until they were an inch in diameter. Of course, I'm betting it'll take longer than 3 years to fruit.
Year's ago, I ordered some persimmon seed from Cliff. He had just finished his planting and sent me a boat-load more seed than I ordered. I started a lot of persimmons from seed and grew them in RootMakers. I bench grafted many of them using the methods you describe as well as Z grafting. I had success but no were near the success rates of bark grafting in the field when trees hit 1" or so in diameter.
In reality, it is probably a little better to just plant persimmons and wait to bark graft them for a number of reasons. First, most trees start out in a vegetative state when they are seedlings. All of their energy is put into growing vegetation. As they get older, there is a hormonal change, and they begin to move to a fruiting stage. When a persimmon is a small seedling where bench grafting techniques work well, it is early in that vegetative cycle, but by the time they are an inch or so in diameter, they are getting closer to the fruiting state. When you bark graft them with a scion from a mature fruiting tree, They seem to transition into that fruiting state faster. First, by now the root system is large enough to support it. The scion from the mature tree has already gone through the shift. That is why we can see fruit in the 3rd leaf after bark grafting trees in this class.
I mostly just graft persimmons that are growing natively on my property. I found a male and a female tree near each other and about the same diameter. I cut down the male and bark grafted it. I let the female tree alone just to see what kind of fruit it produced. The male produced its first persimmons in the 3rd leaf after grafting. The female took about 5 years after the male produced fruit before it produced its first fruit.
That is not to say that there is never a case for bench grafting persimmons. For example, I traded scions with folks and did my bark grafting for the year one year and had scions left over. I used them to bench graft persimmon seedlings and kept them growing in rootmakers and over wintered them. A few of the bark grafts in the field didn't take so I was able to take scions from the seedlings to re-try those varieties the next spring without having to trade for more scions.
I'm sure there are other cases where it makes sense.
Thanks,
Jack