Citrus Growers Forum

Skeeter · Posted: Tue 25 Nov, 2008 9:59 pm

Joe, Your 50-n-1 tree is what inspired me into grafting-- If I had the cultivars and had put all of my grafts on the same tree I would be catching up to you! My lemon is up to 13 now and I have a total of 25 varieties on 7 trees. Thanks for your inspiration and tutorials.

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Skeet

Patty_in_wisc · Posted: Tue 25 Nov, 2008 10:08 pm

Wow Skeeter, good for you. You both have me going now but I'll have to wait till Spring.

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Patty
I drink wine to make other people more interesting Wink

JoeReal · Posted: Tue 25 Nov, 2008 10:30 pm

Skeeter wrote:

Joe, Your 50-n-1 tree is what inspired me into grafting-- If I had the cultivars and had put all of my grafts on the same tree I would be catching up to you! My lemon is up to 13 now and I have a total of 25 varieties on 7 trees. Thanks for your inspiration and tutorials.

I ran out of room to graft more. Cannot convince the missus to forego the lawn, so you can easily catch up!

One thing great about this multi-grafting on mature tree is that you can get premium quality fruits the very next year, even if the resulting graft is only an inch long! Of course, you'd have to regraft on to other vigorous parts of the tree to get bigger limbs of the variety you'd like and pinch off flowers on the new grafts. But for the sake of experimentation, and if taste is your only concern, literally, you can have a normal sized pummelo (biggest citrus fruit) from a one inch branch. You wouldn't need to wait seven or more years for fruit size and quality to improve. Your fruits will normally be the same quality as the age of the tree gets, even if the graft is new, in majority of the time. Grafting unto seedling rootstocks on the other hand, you will be setback between 3 to 7 years to get the same quality fruits as grafting on mature trees. Those are just my observations. I even have a flower that came out of the bud, and then became a good quality normal sized fruit, and it did not sprout any branches. Of course, I'd have to redo the graft as I'd like branches too!

Patty_in_wisc · Posted: Tue 25 Nov, 2008 10:51 pm

Joe, did you use the same graft on all? T bud?

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Patty
I drink wine to make other people more interesting Wink

JoeReal · Posted: Tue 25 Nov, 2008 11:00 pm

Patty_in_wisc wrote:

Joe, did you use the same graft on all? T bud?

When tree was smaller, I used T-buds, chip-buds. Then eventually, when tree got bigger, ie, mature size given the space, many T-buds wouldn't sprout, although they all took. I then switched to combo T-bud and bark-grafts, sometimes whip and tongue, also cleft grafting which gives better success rates on mature tree.

So when tree is still young, about 4 years and younger, I would T-bud all over. But older than that, I would bark graft or other graft styles that are not using single buds. But single buds do work on mature trees, they are not as reliable to give me the sprouts that I wanted.

Skeeter · Posted: Wed 26 Nov, 2008 1:31 am

"I ran out of room to graft more. Cannot convince the missus to forego the lawn, so you can easily catch up!"

Not that easy here in FL-- no longer able to get budwood from state,-- can't get it from out of state. I have to buy new varieties or meet friends that have a dfferent variety--but most of what you find here is satsumas and kumquats. And nowdays, with canker and greening in much of the state, I am cautious about adding anything not fresh from a nursery (where it was grown in a screenhouse).

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Skeet

galen · Posted: Sun 30 Nov, 2008 3:20 pm

Unbelievable! I'm just blown away with your work. Some people just get very good at what they do. Some day, you may need to build a greenhouse around that precious tree.

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Just trying to stay alive.

JoeReal · Posted: Mon 16 Feb, 2009 4:41 pm

81-n-1 Citrus updates 1/24/2009

Front Canopy Grafts are ripening...

By joereal at 2009-02-16

JoeReal · Posted: Mon 16 Feb, 2009 4:41 pm

Mid to late season mandarins starting to taste better each day

By joereal at 2009-02-16

JoeReal · Posted: Mon 16 Feb, 2009 4:42 pm

Sampling of my Gold Nuggets, well, they're not ready yet...

By joereal at 2009-02-16

JoeReal · Posted: Mon 16 Feb, 2009 4:43 pm

Shasta Gold - this is the one that I don't like much amongst the gold series of UCR mandarins. Very narrow window when they taste good. Always towards on the tart side, then they taste nice, then they suddenly rot on the tree. I'm patiently waiting for that peak flavor, and they will be gone once I hit it.

By joereal at 2009-02-16

JoeReal · Posted: Mon 16 Feb, 2009 4:45 pm

Yosemite Gold, among my favorite, good keeping mandarins on the tree. Starting to have nice taste already, but I don't think they will last long now that my daughter discovered that they taste nice already...

By joereal at 2009-02-16

JoeReal · Posted: Mon 16 Feb, 2009 4:46 pm

Other mandarins or clementines:

By joereal at 2009-02-16

JoeReal · Posted: Mon 16 Feb, 2009 4:47 pm

Valencias

By joereal at 2009-02-16

JoeReal · Posted: Mon 16 Feb, 2009 4:48 pm

Sanguina Doble Fina Blood Orange - another tart type, so far, based on my continued sampling...

By joereal at 2009-02-16