Pecan Grafting Thread - Transferred from QDMA Forums

[yoderjac]

Wanted to start a thread for us pecan grafters.... I found this pic that shows many of the available varieties.

Cool Picture. Any recommendations on the best pecan trees to plant? I want to get a few on the property. NE Mississippi.

I know a guy who has been grafting for wildlife in your state for a long time. He is the one that got me started trying to graft pecans to hickory. He tells me he has tried a lot of varieties but his strong advise was to go with Kanza because it is so blight resistant. Pecans need a pollination partner. There are several varieties that will pollinate Kanza. The one I chose was Pawnee. There was not much driving that choice other than availability. As I understand it, blight can reduce nut production a huge amount and sometimes to zero but generally doesn't kill the trees.
The commercial growers do a lot of spraying and such, but for wildlife purposes, my primary selection driver was low maintenance. That plus the recommendation from the guy in Mississippi drove me to Kanza for nut production. I figure even if the Pawnee has blight and does not produce, it will still provide pollination for the Kanza.
I'm certainly not expert here but I have done some homework. This past spring was my first attempt at grafting Pecan to Hickory. My success rate was only about 33% if you define success as the scions being accepted and growing. Time will tell how the ones that took do in the long run. I was happy enough with this to likely try some more next spring. Grafting them to my native hickory is certainly inexpensive, just time consuming.
Thanks,
Jack

Will be looking forward to watching this thread as I will be doing some pecan grafting this spring. I have been working three years on getting a 50 tree orchard going on my place in Alabama with moderate success. Finding the trees I wanted and getting them ordered was a two year deal due to the incredible demand for trees the last few years. I have also had quite a few losses due to some bad trees from the first nursery I bought from as well as the loss of some larger Elliots last years due to freezing. I did luck out last year and found a really good tree source and had 100% survival and very good first year growth, I think due to the way he grows them. When I placed my order for this year the owner volunteered to send me a video on the grafting technique he uses very successfully and budwood in the spring to graft the shoots trees that have grown out below the grafts on the dead trees. The new growth will be perfect grafting size next year based on what he told me. If anyone on here from the southeast is looking for pecan trees PM me and I will give you the nursery contact since I don't know if I am allowed to post it here. He is generally sold out within a few weeks of taking orders but when I talked to him last week he had some inventory because a large order went south.

Pawnee is the King here for us in NE Texas. We have about a 50 tree orchard with other trees scattered around that have been grafted. We've found the best way to get started is to simply grow your own rootstock in the spot where you want the tree. Pecans have very deep tap roots and it's almost impossible to move a tree that is very big at all without damaging it. Most of the time we simply start with a native seedling then graft when it is big enough.
Matt

I've been grafting pecans and a few hickories for several years. The mo Dept of agriculture has a really great instructional page on it. I'll get the link on here if someone doesn't beatme to it first. I mainly use the 4 flap graft though I've used a bark graft as well.

<http://northernpecans.blogspot.com
Northern Pecans Blog
Should be lots of info on that.

Here it is. <http://www.centerforagroforestry.org/pubs/proppecbw.pdf

Hey Matt. My pecan grafting didn't go quite as well as my persimmon so I still would like to bum some Pawnee scions from you this spring. I can pay you back with some more persimmon scions.
Todd

Quote:
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Originally Posted by Merle Hawggard
I've been grafting pecans and a few hickories for several years. The mo Dept of agriculture has a really great instructional page on it. I'll get the link on here if someone doesn't beatme to it first. I mainly use the 4 flap graft though I've used a bark graft as well.
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The only downside I see to the 4 flap graft is that you need to match size pretty well. In my case, I'm generally taking advantage of much larger rootstock than my scions so I was using the bark graft. I tried several methods. With one I used parafilm on the scion and electrical tape to secure the scion to the rootstock. The second method I tried used a cordless battery operated stapler/nailer to secure the scion to the tree and shellac to protect it. In both cases I used aluminum foil and a plastic bag to protect the rootstock.
I did not see any correlation between grafting technique and my poor success rate. I'm sure a lot has something to do with Pecan to Hickory. We have several varieties of hickory on our property. I did not try to correlate between variety and success. Anecdotally, it did seem the trees that got good morning sun had better success than trees under a canopy.
I've posted these on other threads, but since we now have a pecan thread, here are a few that took:

Thanks,
Jack

Quote:
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Originally Posted by dogdoc
Hey Matt. My pecan grafting didn't go quite as well as my persimmon so I still would like to bum some Pawnee scions from you this spring. I can pay you back with some more persimmon scions.
Todd
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Sounds good to me. I have access to a lot of Pawnee. I have several good producers in my front yard. I can also provide native pecans if someone wants to grow them for rootstock.
Matt

 

[yoderjac]

Matt,
That brings up another point I should add to this thread. I had looked at pecans for deer early on. I got very mixed reports of deer use. Some folks told me deer completely ignore them. They have seen deer standing in orchards eating the clover but never touching a pecan. On the other hand, I've had folks tell me that deer just lover them. With such a wide variety of inputs as to deer use, I was not anxious to jump in.
My conclusion was that there are probably several factors involved. One may be the variety characteristics. One thing that commercial pecans are rated on is shell thickness. It varies quite a bit. So, if deer can't crack the shell I'm sure they won't use them. That is certainly the case with my native hickory trees. Squirrels seem to be the only creatures that use those nuts. Another issue may be tannin content. Evidently there is some difference between varieties here but much less information about it is available. Another possibility regarding deer use of pecans may simply be what other foods are available at the same time in different localities.
As I was working on grafting persimmons, I ran into a guy how has been grafting persimmons for wildlife for well over 20 years and has expanded into lots of other trees. One was pecans. He has native pecans and has grafted them to different commercial varieties. As I said previously he likes Kanza the best because many of the other commercial varieties he has tried have fallen prey to the blight. He tells me that if he shakes a pecan tree and does not collect the pecans that by the next morning the deer have cleaned them all up.
This brought me to the conclusion that at least in some locations under some circumstances deer will use Kanza pecans and likely some other commercial varieties.
For me personally, this is not enough evidence for me to invest in planting pecan trees for deer. Planting trees is a pretty big long-term investment. There is a lot of work involved and the payoff, if any will be many years down the road.
On the other hand, I have hickory growing all over the place. My hickory nuts are so hard to crack that nothing uses them but squirrels as far as I can tell. The cost of scions is pretty small, (Very small for Pawnee now that we have Matt on board). There is some time and effort involved in grafting and my success rate between pecans and hickory is only 30% but it is a one time effort. Once the first growing season is over, I'm done with them and what happens with them happens. I have read that in some cases pecans can be produced in 2 to 3 seasons after grafting. So, the payoff, if any, will be fairly quick.
I've done this for one season now as an experiment, and probably will do more next spring for a second season since I only ended up with about 13 trees. If I get another 13 next year at the same success rate, that will be 26 and enough volume for deer to take notice and either start using them or ignore them. That will be the proof in the pudding for me as to whether this is worth it as a deer management technique in my area or not.
I have plenty of native rootstock in place so this has some good long-term potential, but for now it is just potential.
Thanks,
Jack

Jack,
In my experience deer pretty much ignore pecans (native and commercial papershell varieties). However, our deer density is not near what it is further North so your experience may be different. There is just too many other things that are higher on their browse list here. We do have problems with them browsing the young seedlings and smaller trees. Pawnee is a good all around variety. It is susceptible to blight but we haven't had much problem with it. Another good variety that we've have success with is Oconee.
Matt

I think the problem with pecan shells is that they crack hard and sharp, versus a soft shell acorn. Even thin shelled varieties are hard.
I prefer a 4flap graft whenever possible. Bark grafts will blow out in a summer storm just days before you were heading out to stake it.

Quote:
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Originally Posted by Fish
I think the problem with pecan shells is that they crack hard and sharp, versus a soft shell acorn. Even thin shelled varieties are hard.
I prefer a 4flap graft whenever possible. Bark grafts will blow out in a summer storm just days before you were heading out to stake it.
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I staked my bark grafts with bamboo as you can see in the pic. I didn't have any issues the first summer. You are right though, if I had matching rootstock and scion I would have opted for a 4-flap.

Four flap aka banana graft is what we use mostly.

Like I said before I have 100 ' s of native trees and have never once seen a deer feed on pecans. I am hoping however that grafting a larger softer she'll acorn may change that but if not I know I will enjoy the softer shelled pecans.

Pecans also offer great secondary income if you can get enough trees producing. The problem becomes as they get older alot of the commercial varieties seem to get in a two year cycle where they will be loaded one year and not the next. This year is a down year for the trees on my property so I'm expecting them to be loaded next year. Native trees seem to produce almost every year. I have three native trees near my house that are probably 50 years old and produce every year but the nuts are very hard to crack.

Some good info...
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/p...raftingmovies/

Wanted to bump this thread as it's getting time to start harvesting scions.

 

[yoderjac]

END TRANSFER FROM QDMA FORUMS

 

[H20fwler]

Nice thread!
I have four northern pecan trees preordered for early next spring, they will be about 5' tall. I've read they could take up to fifteen years to start bearing nuts?
Kids&grandkids should get to see the results someday.

 

[yoderjac]

I've suspended my pecan grafting. I had a low take on my grafting to hickory. Most of the trees that took are still alive and growing but I would not say they are thriving. They are growing slowly. Not what I expected. With the low take rate, my plan is to watch how these trees do and see how much the pecan are really used by my deer before deciding whether to include this as a larger part of my program.

Thanks,

jack