Good job Joe, thanks! You put a lot of time and thought into this developing your technique, and it is very professional looking. Your demonstrations add a lot to this forum.

In grafts using long scions, where I wrap it with parafilm, I have started wrapping it before inserting it into the rootstock. Of course, yours are so secure that there is not much chance of disturbing the union anyway.

Ned

Great Job Joe!!!!!!!
You need to save all these posts and photos you post and make your own book..

I really have to say the bark lifter on your knife is well worth it.. Every thing I have tried does not compare.. I am thinking of taking a grinder and finisher to a broken knife.. just need to find a broken knife.. I think I could put the same edge on it as yours if I could find one suitable..

Thanks for sharing your pics and info!!!!! don't know where I'd be with out all the super posts!!!

Gina *BabyBlue*

Thanks Gina! I'll never forget how you sharpen that knife! It has gone round trip from west to east and back, imagine that!

much appreciation for the tutorial. one of these days I might be up to the task.

One question, could you estimate your success ratio for citrus grafts? thanks.

If I am not experimenting and follow my own directions, they are near 100% success rates. T-budding and Bark Grafting, the same rate of take. I have been low on the Chip-budding, but have modified my own approach on that, so far have 100% take rate this year on all of them: Chip, T, and bark grafting.

Thank you Joe for all the work you and your friend put into this tutorial. The time spent resizing the photos, writing the text, and then uploading everything must have been significant.

I just finished doing 15 grafts using 7 varieties. As I worked I made an observation. I did not take time to make the tool to implement the solution it suggested; perhaps in another season, or perhaps I'll just try it on "prunings" once I find time later this summer.

My observation is that the branch surface is round and the scion surface is flat. The flatness is most significant at the 'upper' end of the cut on the scion, where the scion has the least 'give.'

Wouldn't it be desirable to flatten this portion of the branch to match the scion? Wouldn't the bark flaps close better over the scion if it fit better?

Here's what I propose to do. I will start with a broken 1/8" high speed steel drill bit and heat it red hot and allow it to cool to anneal the steel. Then I'll heat one end and flatten it with a hammer on my anvil (or the anvil portion of a vise) creating a tapered flat that will be a chisel-knife. Next I will grind it flat and roughly sharpen it. Then I'll make a "U" bend in the round portion of the bit. Then I will reheat it, quench it to harden it, and then gently temper it, heating the round portion and watching the color migrate towards the cutting edge. Finally I will mount it on a dowel handle. Once sharpened, I should be able to insert this between the bark flaps and flatten the exposed part of the branch to match the scion better.

Where does the graft union form? Is it just along the slightly relieved edges of the bark on the scion? Might we be able to induce the formation of even more callus if we lightly scored the bark remaining on the scion with a very fine gouge, made for the purpose, from a syringe needle?

As I envision union formation, callus forms on the underside of the bark flaps and also on the edges of the scion, and this forms the union. For the union to be strong, the tree must fill in the space between the round branch piece and the flat scion piece with new tissue.

I have an alternative approach to the chisel-knife that starts with a length of 1/4" spring steel (a scrap from a broken recoil starter spring, for example,) which I'd anneal. I'd then fold back the edges in the center 1/3 of the piece to form a rounded channel. This I would bend with the round face on the inside of the bend (to be gentle to the bark flaps) until I had a hook with a chisel-knife on one end and a mounting tang at the other. Then I'd proceed as above with tempering and sharpening.

What do you think?

John

John,

Thanks for the compliments. I have been thinking along similar lines. Yes we could flatten out the wood under the bark, but it is quite hard to do. If you can make such tools to suit you it would be very clever. The trick is not to damage the cambiums which is just under the bark.

The other "advanced" details of my bark grafting, I will add more pics if i have the time.

The idea is to have the scionwood fit much better. Manipulating the scionwood and proper branch location at the same time is key to better fit during bark grafting.

In real life application of this method which I forgot to detail out, is to find a portion in the branch that has a flatter surface than the others and would bark graft to those. Not all branches are perfectly round, you may find that there are many locations along the branches that the cross section is oblate, giving you a section that is relatively flat, and I would select those as the best places to bark graft to. When I cut off the stem, you can find the flattest side and so make the vertical incision that runs through the middle of the flat side of the branch. Sometimes it may not be the ideal height nor the ideal location, and for that I will redirect the growth of the buds, and hence when I prepare the scionwood, and try to imagine where I will stick it, I would make sure the direction of the budwood are ideal.

The next is how you would prepare the splice. If you notice, the scionwood is also not perfectly round. So you can create a splice that is really long but narrow by properly selecting the position on how you cut it. You should splice cut the scionwood so that it produces the narrowest splice, not just simply making a splice.

With a narrow splice cut and a flatter branch, equals very good fit most of the time.

Regards,

Joe

For tropical fruits, bark grafting is also very good:

Bark grafting is very good to use on mangoes, avocadoes, citruses, atis (sweetsop), graviola (Guyabano, soursop), atemoya, cherimoya, mabolo, loquats, and other fruit trees whose barks can be easily peeled off when they are slipping. The barks are slipping when the plant is having a growth flush. When you see those new tender growth sprouting in most parts of the tree, the bark is slipping. So you have many chances to do this in a year under a tropical setting that have many growth flushes during the year. There are ways to force the tree into growth flushes, one of them is a major pruning job and after 1 to 3 weeks (depending on type), you will have growth flush and the bark would be slipping. Don't do the bark grafting when it is raining. When it is very hot, make sure your tree is well watered before doing the bark graft. Then cover the graft with parafilm as illustrated in my tutorial and for the tropical setting, use aluminum foil as the last layer to reflect off excess heat, but make sure to allow some light to get into the grafted scionwood for about an hour each day, preferably in the morning.

One thing that bark grafting is very difficult to do is on the trees that have irregular, undulating, intertwined or variably interlocking cambiums and vascular parts. You wouldn't be able to lift their barks properly to do the bark graft. Example of this is lychee and longan, some of their cultivars have such kinds of trunk or stem. The way to graft them is use a very long cleft graft, or a very long side veneer to increase chances of cambium alignment when the thickness of the layers are highly variable. Papaya's are almost the same, but they can be cleft grafted, chip-budded or whip and tongue but not easy to T-bud nor bark graft as their barks are undefined. I am not sure if Longans, Lanzones and the Nephelium genus (rambutan etc) would have this variable thickness of the bark as I don't remember peeling off one of them to do bark grafting. This is easy to do, just crimp the aluminum foil on both ends on the graft and allow the opening on the foil to face east.

Tips for the scionwood part:

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.

Thanks Joe, I could have used this post a couple days ago. I did a few more T-buds and my first bark grafts on citrus over in Alabama at my sisters'. I used an Owari branch from this season's growth to bark graft on a volunteer meyer lemon seedling that my sister was given by a friend. It would have been difficult to use any older growth since the rootstock was only pencil size. I guess chances are slim, but if it doesn't take, I can bud it later when we get some better budwood out of this years growth.

Joe, if you ever have any extra clementine budwood (nules especially), my sister in Alabama would like for me to add that to the cocktail tree I am building for her.

Surely would, IF I ONLY COULD, legally send them without violating state and federal laws concerning citruses.

My sister lives in Alabama--(and the cocktail tree I am talking about is inground there) it is not considered a citrus state, so it is leagal as far as I know. I can PM her address whenever you have budwood. Actually, I have 4 sisters over there-- 2 are into growing citrus and will share any budwood-- and of course they will share any fruit with me!

Skeet, check your PM!