Woohoo guys!
With Bark Graft, you have tremendously more flexibility in what scionwood to use. Angular ones, itty bitty tiny ones, even the big ones, they will most likely take.
I am jumping up and down from the results of my different bark grafting experiment with citruses. It is very forgiving. As long as the scionwood is not diseased or doesn't have molds yet, it will surely take, even if it is very lousy to use for T-budding. Finally, I would be able to use all those lousy extra freebie budwood that sometimes UCR will send along with your budwood orders, they are perfect for bark grafting but impossible with T-budding.
I have used the current season's growth, as long as the wood has hardened a bit, and not the succulent vegetable-like branch, but as long as it has some hard wood in the middle, it is good to use. I can also use the stems below the current season's growth, they would also take, and even those below the ones recommended for T-budding.
Of course the best to use, simply because of diameter size are the budwoods below the current season's growth. The size is just my preference for speed of handling and grafting process.
You usually won't worry about the blind buds with Bark Grafting, those are the ones that gets removed when you form the splice on the budstick, good riddance to those fake buds that sometimes can fool you when you are doing T-bud and you didn't know they were included by accident by the donor, or simply forgot to remove them or didn't remove them because they know you are an expert to identify and not use them.
And now for the collection part:
Although you can collect scionwood any time of the day, but if you have the option to chose the time to collect, the best time would be early in the morning, from 1 hour before sunrise to 1 hour after sunrise. TAKE NOTE: That's two hours, one hour before to one after sunrise. There would enough visible light at that time too.
It is "cool" to do, very comfortable temperature to work, at least for me. The temperature would have been the lowest for that day if it is calm. If you study closely micrometeorological data that keeps track of temperature continuously, the time of the coldest temperature is normally about half an hour after sunrise due to thermal inertia of the land mass but depends if you have interacting breezes at that particular time.
Plus, collecting at the lowest temperature at that time in spring means that the scionwood will not go into a lot of shock adjusting to their destination storage bins until you can graft them. Contrast this with collecting at the hottest time of the day and suddenly place the scionwood into coolers at 38-40 deg F ideal storage, it will have some shock.
Plus, the citruses or avocado budwoods have been saturated with appropriate amount of moisture by that time. If you have not been watering your plants, water them the afternoon before you collect the scionwood in the morning. It will make the scionwood turgid and have enough water stored that is needed when your grafting schedule slips further and would have extended your storage requirement. Even if you did not water your plants, the overnight duration would have allowed the plants to recover from lack of watering, and have helped with increase turgidity come early morning time when evapotranspiration is about to significantly start.
Of course there are downsides to collecting scionwood in the morning, and it could be really chilly to some of us.
Here's my modus operandi:
1. Select the scionwood, the day before and mark them, this is to make your morning collection much faster. I usually have an orange glow ribbon tapes that I buy from Ace Hardare, so easy to tear and tie to the branches that I want to cut from. To select the branches, just read my tips earlier about the below the current season's growth.
2. the night before, prepare your equipments:
a) small carry on cooler with about an inch of ice in the bottom, then layer a plastic sheet over the ice, then paper towels over the plastic sheet. This would make the temperature chamber of the cooler within ideal temperature for longer transport if needed. for backyard that is a few steps behind the kitchen, there is no need for this step.
b) have some ziploc bags ready, quart size is the best.
c) make sure you have lysol or rubbing alcohol (70% isopropyl) or ethanol (70%) hand held sprayers.
d) clean your pruning shears to remove gunk, best to sterilize them with alcohol or lysol.
3. Come early morning, you go to the first pre-selected branch. I do the opposite procedure as most of you will instinctively do: I first label the ziploc bag with the cultivar name. I first cut off off the current season's growth and throw away, leaving the last season's brnch intact, then nip off all the leaves from that branch from their petioles, leaving the petioles attached to the buds, while that last season's branch is still attached to the main branch. I would then spray with lysol, or alcohol, after the leaves are cut, wait one minute, do other stuff like label your ziploc bag with proper cultivar name, to wait for the alcohol to take effect and partially dry off, and then finally cut off the budstick when it is just ready to go into the ziploc bag. This sequence of steps minimizes moisture losses from the budsticks and at the same time sterilize it.
Normally what most of you will do is to first cut off the branch, then start to clean it up of current growth and nipping off the leaves. This is very convenient and instinctive and most of you will surely do it like this. But take note that the moment you cut that budstick branch off, it will start to lose water right away before you finish preparing it. It is like you cut the supply side and it is drying out while you prepare it for he collection bag. So it is better to prepare the budstick while it is still attached to the plant and the last step of taking it off is to cut it off and put right away into the bag.
4. Then seal the ziploc bag, there is no need to put moist paper towel in there if you have prepared your tree the day before so that budsticks have enough moisture for longer storage. Simply throw into the cooler.
5. Finally, squirt alcohol or lysol from where you cut the branch from the mother tree and then sterilize your pruning shears, your hands by spraying alcohol or lysol and move on to the next collection point.
6. At end of collection, move your collected budwoods in the ziploc bags into the fridge bin which is set at between 38 to 40 deg F and it can stay there until you are ready to use them or ship them off at later dates. Or package them right away into the priority mail envelopes and store overnight in the fridge before mailing them the next morning.
When prepared the way I do it, your budwoods will be plump, and hopefully sterilized at their surfaces, and the insect eggs that happened to be there may have also been dehydrated by alcohol treatment.
That's how I am preparing my scionwood for sharing. Of course, you can collect them any way you choose to do so. This is only my recommendation.
