Citrus Growers Forum

dauben · Posted: Fri 12 Nov, 2010 11:50 pm

Hello all,
I thought I'd try to experiment with a new idea I had, but thought I'd see what everyone else thought. I had a number of dead trees that I stumped and a few of them have come back to life with several suckers that are coming up from the perimeter of the tree. When I moved into the house, I grafted onto the suckers and then inarched the remaining suckers onto the one I grafted onto to get as much of the energy to the scion.

Now here's my new idea . . . What I did this evening was to grasp all of the suckers together with one hand and wrap grafting tape tightly around the bunch. My theory is that the bunch will grow together and I would eventually trim everything above the grafting tape back to just one branch to be fed from all of the suckers below the tape line. My only concern is with girdling everything within the tape, but hey, this is a x'periment and failure always an option. Any other thoughts?

Phillip

gdbanks · Posted: Sat 13 Nov, 2010 12:50 am

interesting idea, not sure if it will work i would not think just taping branches together automatically makes them grow together. i would think some damage to the outer surface would be needed to have them join. even minor scratches/scrape on the bark may be enough.

good luck

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dauben · Posted: Sat 13 Nov, 2010 1:19 am

gdbanks wrote:

interesting idea, not sure if it will work i would not think just taping branches together automatically makes them grow together. i would think some damage to the outer surface would be needed to have them join. even minor scratches/scrape on the bark may be enough.

good luck

I'm not sure it will work either. If it does I'll post some pictures of the final results. Maybe if they end up all girdled, but form a union together, I can get a branch or two below the tape line to grow to form a new tree.

Phillip

Millet · Posted: Sat 13 Nov, 2010 1:35 am

Did you just tie the suckers together, or did you first make a matching wound on all the suckers so that the cambium will grow together during the healing process? - Millet (792-)

dauben · Posted: Sat 13 Nov, 2010 1:48 am

Millet wrote:

Did you just tie the suckers together, or did you first make a matching wound on all the suckers so that the cambium will grow together during the healing process? - Millet (792-)

There were probably 40 suckers so I didn't bother wounding them (in the name of science I didn't want to spend the time) Smile

. My goal was to see if as the diameters of the branches grew whether the bark on the green shoots would give way or agitated in the wind enought to have the cambiums join on their own.

With my grove not being managed for years, I noticed some of my trees that had crossing limbs that eventually grew together. This may have been more due to the wind influence scratching the bark off before callusing over to form their own union, but I wanted to see if I could replicate this artificially. 'May be a dumb idea, but once the earth was flat. . . Smile

Phillip