Grafting stone fruits

[drew51]

This year to expand my orchard I'm going to try and graft 6 different peach cultivars and 6 plum cultivars unto my existing trees. I'm new at it so only expect about half to take. That's OK, I'll try again next time!

So I'm going to have a bunch of Frankenfruit trees in the yard. It's going to be tough as I have to sacrifice a lot of fruit to add new grafts. What i do is each tree has 3 or 4 scaffolds. I will cut the scaffold down and grow the new scaffold with the graft. if it doesn't take, I'll try again on the same scaffold in a year. the scaffolds I cut off will have fruit, lot's of fruit argh! Oh well, it's good practice. Once i finish I will have peach and plum ripening throughout the growing season. And many types, yellow flesh, white flesh, firm and melting flesh types. All of them are the best of the best as far as plums and peaches go. Some are super rare and hard to find. All from other growers, none purchased. Like we trade tomato seeds. Fruit tree growers trade scion wood.
With a small backyard it is the only way to increase fruit types.

A friend of mine in Canada, Konrad has an older tree, this is what it looks like.

A plum tree.



I plan to keep the trees smaller myself. But it shows the idea of making multigrafted trees

[Starlight]

Drew.... That is totally awesome and amazing. I have seen some of those 3 in one fruit trees offered in catalogs and I always wondered if they were for real or not and if they actually would grow. Now I see that they can, will and do.

If you're able and don't mind sharing, I would love to see some pics on how you go about each stage of your grafting project.

How long do you figure before you will know whether your grafts will take or not?

I wonder if grafting would be a way to try and get some of the sweet cherries to grow down here. I would love to be able to grow some. All we have is a sour , small wild type cherry that the birds love and will drop seeds everywhere. Pain to dig up and remove.

I wish you luck on your project and hope you share how your success goes.

[drew51]

I'm new to grafting but will document my efforts and explain what I'm doing.
First is to secure scion wood. You collect it this time of year. You want one year old wood for stone fruit, not sure about pomes? I believe 1 year wood too. Mark a friend of mine wrote this about grafting peach, which is what he sent me.
I collected your scion wood (along with someone else's) today and have it
stored in the fridge. I will plan on sending it out this coming Monday.

I prefer to send it out Mondays, that way it doesn't have to spend a
weekend in a warm post office before it gets to the destination. I try to
do everything possible to keep the wood as dormant as possible.

That's really the challenge with peach wood, trying to keep it as dormant
as possible. It is some of the first wood to break dormancy in the
refrigerator, and the last wood that is grafted. In other words,
something like apples stay dormant a long long time in the fridge, but
also are grafted earlier than peaches, so apples are no problem keeping
dormant until they are ready to graft. Likewise with pears. Peaches are
the opposite, and so can be very difficult to keep dormant.

Try to keep your refrigerator as close to 32F as possible. It won't hurt
the scion wood to let it have some minor freezing b/t 30 and 32, as long as
it's not really prolonged freezing. Prolonged freezing of the wood will
dry it out and possibly kill it.

Wait till your peaches fully leaf out before you try to graft, and make
sure the next week has projected highs of 80F or more. Don't try to do
budding for spring grafting peaches. Budding works fine in the fall, when
using soft wood cuttings, but it doesn't work near as well in the spring,
with hard wood cuttings.

In the spring, use some form of scion grafting. It doesn't matter what
type of graft you use, just not budding. I use about a 2 or 2.5" piece of
scion wood with 2 or 3 buds on it. If the scion wood does start to sprout
in the fridge, don't panic, just try to keep it cold and continue to wait
for the right temps outside, before grafting. I've still had good luck
grafting sprouted wood, as long as the temps are right. Make sure you
tape your graft connections well, and make sure you wrap the whole graft
in parafilm. The second step is especially important if you're grafting
with scion wood which has already sprouted.

Your question about cherries. it probably would not work as remember sweet cherry trees are grafted already on a rootstock. With this multi-grafting it is really the same thing, the tree is the rootstock instead. So chances are it will fail too. You can graft sweet cherry on tart, or wild cherry, that does work.

The cocktail trees are possible because peach, plum, cherry, and apricot are all in the Prunus genus and are compatible.

As spring comes I will document my progress. I'm going to use simple grafts as I lack experience. Mostly wedge grafts. Videos of how to do them are all over Utube.

Here are some of my trees I will be using. I keep them small by multiple pruning's. they will never be taller than 8 feet. Picture from last summer, this spring they will be three years old. They should produce this year but almost all fruit will be removed as I rebuild scaffolds with new grafts. One scaffold will remain of original cultivar, so I will harvest some fruit this year.

[drew51]

Oh, you can tell if graft took in about a month. if it grows, it took. The grafting tape they make is thin, and the buds can grow through it, so you do not have to remove it.
I may save some scion to try again on any failed grafts if I can keep it from sprouting!
The trees in the photo will have to be pruned too before they grow, which I'm going to do soon.

I mentioned the Prunus genus and not only can you graft say peach unto plum, you can cross these with each other too. I bought a few trees this year. one is Nadia a Plum-cherry interspecific cross. Parents are a plum tree and a cherry tree. Here is a photo of the fruit. Looking forward to this one. I heard the fruit is top rate! Lot's of cherry flavor.

[Starlight]

Those are some nice looking trees you have Drew. They look even better than some of the ones growing down here and we are peach country.

The past few years it has been hard to even find a decent tasting peach that is sweet. Most have been too hard and very bland, no sweetness to them at all. I don't know if it because we haven't been getting enough chilling temps or what. Last year we had all that unreal snow and cold, but still most of the peach crop tasted like bland rocks.

I do have zonal envy as there are so many fruits that we can't grow because of not enough chilling hours.

I think one of the fruits I miss the most from living in the North is pears. There are pears here, but they are like a rock. Teeth chippers they are and no sweet juice to run down your chin.

Thanks for the idea. I never even thought about using all these wild pain in the rump cherry trees to graft sweet ones on too. I was just looking the other day out at one that refuses to die that is established right next to my veggies. I've dug and cut and hacked away at the roots and liek old faithful, it comes back year after year and looks more like a bush than a tree. Maybe instead of trying to irradiate again this year. I'll experiment with some grafting. Have to google and see what is out there. Would be nice if I can turn something useless into something "fruitful."

I haven't done a lot of grafting either, and think I have lost more than I ever managed to get to take so far, but I do like the "v" method too.

I haven't tried covering with parafilm. I have only ever used the rubberbands and than believe it or not would spray with liquid bandaid like you use on kids hurts to help keep out the germs. A bit crazy I know, but at the time it seemed to help.

Oh that Nadia looks yummy. Think I'm going to have to see about doing a bit of shopping and see if I can locate a tree or two of it and give it a try down here and see how it holds up to our heat and humidity.

You do have the right idea though. Folks are starting to learn more and grow veggies, but the price of fresh fruits seems to be going up and up everyday. It's almost to the point where if you don't have your own trees you can't afford to buy it.

Glad I found this post of yours. It's going to be nice to learn about trying to grow some of the different stone fruits and I appreciate your sharing.

[drew51]

Yeah prices are getting out of hand. Even if you make decent money, it's crazy.
I grow blueberries, strawberries, honeyberries, currants, blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, peaches, plums, pluots, sweet cherries, sour or tart cherries, dogwood cherries, and a few other odd berries. I need to grow apples, still learning the other fruits.
I also grow onions, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, melons, lettuce, radishes, and herbs. I'll grow more as the years go on. Still learning many of these fruit and vegetables.
And I live in suburbia, it can be done. I just have a small lot.

[Starlight]

Blueberries do ok down here as long as you give them a lot of supplemental water during the summer. Without the extra watering, crop yield is very low and a lot of folks lose their plants. In fact, now is the time to be getting them in the ground.

I have a few High Bush Blueberries and quite a few wild blueberry bushes. The wild ones I never see any fruit on, because about the time they start blossoming, the heat is on and they drop off. Looks like white snow on the ground around the bushes.

I have wild muscadine and scuppernog vines. Loads of black raspberries. They run wild everywhere. I keep saying one day I am going to try and dig them up and see if I can't try and get them contained into one area. I'll pull and dig roots out and a few weeks later I'll have more plants pop up in different spots from all the runner roots.

I have strawberries. I have found that Seascape does real well down here. The berries will handle just about anything thrown at them and the fruits stay firm for a long time and no major insect or fungal problems on them either.

An advantage you have with being in suburbia, is that you don't have to deal with so many critters having free lunch I imagine. Between the deer and yes they jump my 6 foot fence, the wild bunnies, squirrels, chipmunks, you name it, we got em, you barely can get an fruits for yourself.

I just got the new 2015 Indiana Berry Co. catalog. I'm drooling through all the fruits in it. They have a new one I seen called Honeyberries. They are supposed to ripen before strawberries and have the size, flavor and color of wild blueberries. You seen or tried any of them?

One of the fruits I want to add this year is Lingonberries.

Somewhere I have a book and in it are some of the neatest designs on structures to build for growing lots of fruits and veggies ina very small area. It shows up how to grow vertically and have three or four crops growing on the same structure all at once, even watermelons in the air.

If I find it, I'll let you know the name of it and maybe you can find it locally at book store or library or Amazon. It might help you to get even more out of your garden space.

I've got seed for Huckleberries and I believe I still have some Gogi berry seeds if you want to give them a try and Ground Cherries too.

[drew51]

I grow ground cherries every year. Thanks for the offer on seeds. I do want to grow some huckleberries and Goji too but currently I have a huge blackberry and raspberry breeding project and need every extra inch of space to test seedlings. So I have to pass.
The grafting is a cool way for me to add plants without taking up more space.
It has satisfied my need to always add something new every year.

Honeyberries are more a plant for my zone. I don't think they would do well in your area.
The best cultivars I have seen are Aurora, and Borealis.
http://honeyberryusa.com/honeyberry-plants-1.html

You are correct pest pressure is very low here plus I have Jesse the wonder dog trained to watch over my plants.

[Starlight]

Awwwwwww. Too cute. Beautiful dog. Nice healthy looking plants too.

I don't know about your area, but down here the college has a fruit extension trial fields. You might check and see if you have one around your area. If you have a breeding program going on, and if you are looking for something special, and ask nicely, you can get pieces of scion to work with. It never hurts to ask. Local county extension offices can tell you where the trial fields are in your area.

I would love and so would many folks, to see a red raspberry that would grow and produce down here. It's almost 5 bucks for a little small half pint container of them. No problem with growing the blackberries, but the red darn near impossible and I really don't know why. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody even trying to grow them down here.

Hope this link works. Here is another way to grow more. Just sub the flowers for veggies.

http://cubits.org/Containers1/pages/190/

[drew51]

Ha! That was good! Luckily my daughter does it for me, and my yard is full of berries! So she helps herself.

The cultivar Baba raspberry will grow in your area, it grows in San Diego, it should grow anywhere.
I have some friends in northern MI and in Canada that grow blackberries, but they are not that hardy and require protection. So I'm trying to develop a better tasting blackberry that is hardy. It's going to take years to do and It might not work. Although if it does, I may patent it.
BTW thanks for the info on strawberries, that cultivar is good to know. I grow all kinds even white ones, the pineberries



I also grow musk strawberries, notice the red seeds.