To paraphrase Einstein.
Short story: I grafted EARLY this year (zone 6, mid March) and my grafts DID NOT DIE.
Long story: read below
This is somewhat of a philosophical post (feel free to stop reading if I offend your sensibilities).
Conventional wisdom is that you can't graft in the field until the threat of freezing is past. This year I decided that I don't like conventional wisdom; I decided to "question" it.
My educational background is in biology with just a tiny amount of botany. I didn't understand WHY it wouldn't work to whip and tongue or cleft graft in March. Some of the explanation (I hope maya et all will provide further opinions) is that the scions or graft unions will freeze. But the scions/branches on the trees in the orchards don't freeze, so I thought this to be an insufficient explanation. A frozen graft Union seems harmful, but a frozen bud on the end of the scion is indeed consistent with naturally occurring conditions.
So, on 3/13/16 I started cleft grafting to "top-work" my existing trees. On 3/20 and 3/21 it was 20 degrees. The 10-day forecast looked warm-ish. On 3/23 I finished grafting (mostly cleft, some w/t) on last years failed grafts. Last year was my first year grafting, so there were plenty of failures around to try on!!!
By 4/15, we had several nights with low temps of 20 plus 20mph winds.
In spite of this, of the approximately 50 grafts I tried this year, more than 95% are already leafed out and it looks like the few holdouts might leaf out as well. Most of these grafts have between 6-12" of new green primary growth above the graft Union so I'm quite optimistic.
All are on either mm111, Emla 106 or m7. Many different early and late season Varieties were grafted. I will post a list below.
So, perhaps we should question the advice to wait until April or May to top-work. Maybe I'm
Missing some hugely important data point, but given my near 100% success rate (and my novice grafting status with about 60% success last year) I think this deserves further consideration.
Partly I tried it because my scions were starting to have mold problems in spite of bleach use, and partly I did it to see if I could.
So far, I'm happy I tried
Short story: I grafted EARLY this year (zone 6, mid March) and my grafts DID NOT DIE.
Long story: read below
This is somewhat of a philosophical post (feel free to stop reading if I offend your sensibilities).
Conventional wisdom is that you can't graft in the field until the threat of freezing is past. This year I decided that I don't like conventional wisdom; I decided to "question" it.
My educational background is in biology with just a tiny amount of botany. I didn't understand WHY it wouldn't work to whip and tongue or cleft graft in March. Some of the explanation (I hope maya et all will provide further opinions) is that the scions or graft unions will freeze. But the scions/branches on the trees in the orchards don't freeze, so I thought this to be an insufficient explanation. A frozen graft Union seems harmful, but a frozen bud on the end of the scion is indeed consistent with naturally occurring conditions.
So, on 3/13/16 I started cleft grafting to "top-work" my existing trees. On 3/20 and 3/21 it was 20 degrees. The 10-day forecast looked warm-ish. On 3/23 I finished grafting (mostly cleft, some w/t) on last years failed grafts. Last year was my first year grafting, so there were plenty of failures around to try on!!!
By 4/15, we had several nights with low temps of 20 plus 20mph winds.
In spite of this, of the approximately 50 grafts I tried this year, more than 95% are already leafed out and it looks like the few holdouts might leaf out as well. Most of these grafts have between 6-12" of new green primary growth above the graft Union so I'm quite optimistic.
All are on either mm111, Emla 106 or m7. Many different early and late season Varieties were grafted. I will post a list below.
So, perhaps we should question the advice to wait until April or May to top-work. Maybe I'm
Missing some hugely important data point, but given my near 100% success rate (and my novice grafting status with about 60% success last year) I think this deserves further consideration.
Partly I tried it because my scions were starting to have mold problems in spite of bleach use, and partly I did it to see if I could.
So far, I'm happy I tried