I was blessed to receive some flying dragon fruit for seed from Buddinman last fall, and I have successfully cleft grafted two meyers lemons to two of the seedlings. Boy was I excited! They were such small diameter, slightly larger than a toothpick when I made the attempt. Way too small for me to attempt any type of bud grafting. I had lost a small branch on my meyer this spring, and decided to give it a try. I used regular 1/2 inch grafting tape (not parafilm) and made sure I prestretched the tape to get a really nice tight contact. I did not have high hopes as I felt like I was all thumbs, but success seems to be mine. They are both flushing. I removed the tape on the scion but left the tape on the grafting location for now. My daughter is away for the summer and has the camera, so pictures are not possible at this time.

Thank you Buddinman for the seed and Laaz for the instruction! My long term goal of budding and/or grafting a Meiwa kumquat is that much closer!

Barbara

Congrats Barbara !

That's great news, congrats. I plan to try grafting myself one day and your good news gives me hope, thanks.

Success on first try, and on such small root stock. Marvelous work. - Millet (539-)

Thank you all for the encouragement! Millet, in my excitement to relay the story, I neglected to mention that I have been experimenting on bark grafts on my apple trees for the past 2 springs. Different media, but practice nonetheless. So I cannot claim such good results on the first try, although I guess that is exactly what I did.

That is where I picked up the idea to prestretch the tape, as I lost a few grafts that seemed to pop right out of the incision after an extremely hardy rain. To me it seemed as though the flow up the tree's cambium layer was too much for the tape to hold the graft in place. I thought that I had used a good tight wrap, but it was not good enough. Prestretching the tape before firmly wrapping allowed the tape to draw tighter, it seemed to me.

The flying dragon stock was quite hard to handle at its size. I probably would not have tried it but for the fact that the branch that I lost on the meyers had a couple of tips that were the same diameter as the rootstock. I justified it because I had quite a few seedlings, and there is no time like the present! I almost cut off one side of the rootstock on one of the grafts because it was so thin, and it was hard to keep in place while I wrapped it. All in all, though, it was a good experience and I am so glad now that I did it.

Barbara

The cleft method really works great. I was able to successfully graft Nagami kumquat, variegated calamondin, Bearrs lime, and Calamondin onto Calamondin rootstocks. I grew the rootstocks from seed about 3 years ago and the plants were not true, so after finding your excellent cleft/parafilm method, I tryed cleft grafting on the rootstocks, it works with a high success rate. Thanks for posting the detailed cleft graft method with excellent photos,