I don't remember where on the forum, but somewhere I read a post that mentioned something about a bark reversal to limit growth.

Could someone please explain

Skeeter, I have mentioned this a zillion times in almost all forums I've been to, except banana forums for obvious reasons.

I have not done this on my citruses, not yet as I am still grafting them. When my grafting has been done, then I will do bark inversion to limit their growth. It has dwarfing effect by limiting the food supply into the roots but can increase fruit sizes and to a certain extent yield, and also make your trees mature "tasting" much earlier. But if you make a mistake in doing this, you could lose the entire tree.

You can do bark inversion not on the main trunk, but on branches with fruits such that of Algerian Clementines and other Satsumas. Those fruit laden branches will have bigger fruits. In this case, if you make mistake you end up girdling those branches, which is a practice done for mandarins anyway.

Anyway, here's how it's done:

OK you Mentioned if you do it wrong you can loose the whole tree ?

So basically just one a branch ?

this is really interesting. Tammy

To effect dwarfing, bark inversion is done at the main trunk. If you do it on a select number of branches, that would have the same effect as girdling but that you will not lose the branch as opposed to girdling but the intended effect is the same.

Now if you do the bark inversion on the main trunk, you could lose the tree if you do it wrong. There are several ways that it could be done wrong. One is that if your timing is off, you would not get a nice ring of bark and that it would fall apart and when you put it back, it will not be pretty, and end up girdling the tree at the main trunk. It will be fine for that season, but next year it will die. Another is that when there is disease pressure such as gummosis happening in other trees, it could make your citrus susceptible, and when this happens at the main trunk, your tree is a goner.

Thus one has to be careful if your tree is a prized possession. In my case, each tree in the ground contain at least 10-50 cultivars, and I will not be losing one, but all of them in one tree in case I made mistake.

Could this be done to ungrafted root stock and then (if sucessful) the root stock grafted to resulting in dwarf? That way the only thing that would be lost is root stock if something goes wrong...

Gina *BabyBlue*

Gina, sure it could be done to ungrafted rootstock. I would not do it though as this will decrease your chances of take later. The reason why I am not doing bark inversion is because I am still grafting the trees. Only when I have stopped grafting, then will I do it for maintaining height and size, at least it will stay same size for 4 years without pruning. If you do it on a rootstock, grafting to it would be difficult. the root system would not be as vigorous, but that is just my speculation. I haven't really tried it and observe for myself the effects on subsequent grafting. Perhaps you can try it and then report it. I might do it myself, I have about 5 flying dragon rootstocks getting some nice growth this year.

Joe, what do you think would happen if after the bark reversal was 100% healed, then you budded into the reversed bark? Provided the bark that was reversed was wide enough. Or reversed barked by putting a bark from a different variety such as the dwarfing variety Flying Dragon. - Millet

Millet, that would be too interesting to try. Ideas like these merits formal scientific research and paper writing.

Bark inversion mistakes or failures. When this happens, there is still a chance to correct the failure. If for example the ring of bark died out completely, if you don't do anything, the tree could die. There is however a technique called bridge grafting. It is a method of "bridging" the gap in the bark. You obtain scionwood from the canopy, then do bark grafting on both ends of the scionwood, effectively forming a bridge over the gap. This way, the tree would still be alive after a failed bark inversion process.

Thanks Joereal-- I will try reversal on a limb or 2 after I have grafted.

I also read on one of your post that you start preparing the limb you are going to use for budding about 6 months before budding and that you select the limb based on orientation and some other factors I don't remember. Could you please expand on limb selection process. What size limb is best?

I am planning to put several varieties on the Lisbon lemon I have next to my house. It is growing rapidly and is now over 6 ft high and wide. Limbs from the last flush grew over 3 ft. Do I want to use limbs that have multiple branches ( beyond the point I intend to bud), or straight fast growing limbs?