bencelest

and 5 beef tomato plants

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Banana Nut

bencelest

A couple of years ago I tasted the seedless kishu at Gene Lester's orchard and I was hooked ever since to the taste. Even though slightly small, the taste is so superb that I did not stop until I have one planted in my garden. I have now 2 plants but I've so far are removing all the fruits so they can grow bigger faster. They are prolific fruitier.

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Banana Nut

john_ny

How come there are 2 threads titled, "What did you graft today?"? Could these be merged?

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John

bencelest

How?

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Banana Nut

harveyc

a moderator can do it; ask them if you want

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bencelest

No. This may not be important enough to do this thing. They are so busy enough to do more important things.
All one can do is do an extra click to see the other thread.
One of it will fade into oblivion sooner than you think.

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Banana Nut

john_ny

Since the other thread is older, and probably is the one that's going, I'll copy my last post here.

Over the years, I have done many grafts. Some time ago, I would do several hundred fruit trees, each year, for my nursery business. Lately, demand has slacked off somewhat. I think this is due to the fact that we are more crowded than we were, land prices have risen, and yards are smaller.
Since I am in New York, most of what I did were temperate, rather than tropical, fruits; apples, pears, peaches, plums, apricots, and cherries. I have been most successful with whip and tongue grafts, which are done in the winter, when trees are dormant, but have also done some T buds, and chip buds, which are done when the trees are growing, and the bark slips. Peaches are normally budded, in the summer, because the grafts don't take well in cold weather. I wanted to graft, rather than bud, some peaches. I solved the problem, by potting up the rootstocks and taking them in the greenhouse, in late winter, doing the grafts, and leaving them in the warm house for the union to heal.
A good little hint: I wrap the grafts, or buds, with a laboratory film, called, "Parafilm". This is a very stretchy plastic film, that adheres to itself (but without glue). You do not have to remove it. It stretches, as the union swells and, eventually, just falls off. On a bud, you don't have to wrap it above, and below, the bud. You can tape right over the bud and it will grow right through the tape.

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John

bencelest

Somehow I lost my grafting knife so I used the replaceable blade utility knife I got from Home Depot and I honed a steak knife with my grinder to shape like my grafting blade its use is to loosen the bark . Then I grafted about 5 seedless kishu to my Chandler pomello and to my Eureka lemon.
A grafting knife has 2 blades on it one to shape the scion and the other blade to loosen the bark.
And it works wonderful.
With all of my grafting had I still have to see a failure.
Lucky indeed.

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Banana Nut

bencelest

I also grafted a giant bobcock peach on a plout and then this plout was grafted to a satsuma plum a year ago.
Also grafted Superior plums today .

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Banana Nut

bencelest

Here's a branch in my plout where apricots and peaches are grafted to it.

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Banana Nut

bencelest

And here's a Superior plum with flowers already after 25 days. It was grafted to a satsuma plum last 3/1/09 .Pic taken on 3/25/09

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Banana Nut

bencelest

Here's a Blynhym apricot on its 2nd year that is grafted to a plout

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Banana Nut

bencelest

close up view

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Banana Nut

harveyc

Yesterday I grafted about 55 chestnut trees to about 8-10 cultivars. Today I got busy with alfalfa hauling and irrigating and only got 24 more trees grafted to just 1 variety. I have a little over 100 to go. This is ideal weather for the rind bark graft I use for chestnuts. We have temps of about 80F and the clouds bring humidity which helps minimize drying out of scions. I do not use Parafilm for these grafts unless them are quite small (which is not typical).

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Patty in Wisc

What is a "rind bark" graft? That's a new one for me.
This last weekend I grafted a Winter Banana apple to our 5 in 1 apple tree. I did the cleft/wedge graft. Other grafts on this tree were whip & tongue. Hope they all take!

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Got a lite?
Patty




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Patty in Wisc has sadly passed away 9/05/11. We will miss you Patty.

harveyc

I used to see it on Google books, but it seems to be in hiding now:
The grafter's handbook - Google Book Search

I have some photos from 2 years ago at Correia Chestnut Farm - American Grown Fresh Chestnuts From Our Family Farm to You; large hand-harvested Colossal chestnuts, recipes, instructions for roasting chestnuts, chestnut roasters, chestnut knives

I use whip and tongue grafts often when I am grafting onto small stock.

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bencelest

Me too? I don't know that one.
I accidentally check my Stella cherry this afternoon and show a friend my grafts. It so happened that I saw my graft on that tree done on February 3, 2009 with Ludlow cherry that I got from a scion Exchange. I was surprised how big it grown and has 2 cherry fruit. That was only 3 months hence!
It was a cleft/wedge graft.
And Oh, I have so many many grafts with different trees!
What amazed me is the Tachima plum Joe sent me.
Some of the grafts have fruits already and they are all so easy to graft/take on different trees and a prolific growers.
I'll soon find out how big the fruit is and how sweet it is.

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Banana Nut

bencelest

About 85% of my grafts are whip and tongue.
Cleft/wedge grafts are my new toy/experiment and I am surprised how easy they took.
I maybe doing a lot of this in the future because of its ease of doing and its excellent bonding to the mother plant.

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Banana Nut

harveyc

Benny, you should buy Garner's Grafter's Handbook. It's got more grafts in there than you can imagine and some very interesting illustrations.

I used to do whip and tongue grafts almost exclusively but, when I began chestnut grafting, another grower recommended this method to me and it works great when grafting onto larger stock. I did about 1,000 grafts on my chestnuts in 2007 and had over a 99% take.

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harveyc

Today I grafted another 60 chestnut trees and think that leaves me with 59 more for tomorrow. Many of the ones I grafted 7-8 days ago are now growing. This is ideal weather for chestnut grafting, upper 70s or around 80F.

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