Citrus Growers Forum

valenciaguy · Posted: Thu 22 Mar, 2007 12:03 am

What is better to use for apples and pears, I only have a little bit of grafting tape right now but I have grafting wax and a new toilet was ring. I want to save the grafting tape till I can some more will those the wax do for apples and pears?

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JoeReal · Posted: Thu 22 Mar, 2007 2:10 am

You can use ordinary masking tape for apples and pears, they'll do okay with them.

Millet · Posted: Thu 22 Mar, 2007 2:32 am

I ran out of budding tape today, so I just cut up a long strip of a sealable plastic bag and used it. Bonnie, told me that he has used bread rappers when he was in Central American and ran out of tape.

Millet

JoeReal · Posted: Thu 22 Mar, 2007 5:39 am

Saran wrap are also excellent. the challenge is to cut it into 1/2" strips. If you can do that, you're set. It sticks to itself unlike the plastic wrapper for bread.

valenciaguy · Posted: Thu 22 Mar, 2007 9:19 am

Alright so then could I still use the wax with the Saran wrap?

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JoeReal · Posted: Thu 22 Mar, 2007 1:14 pm

nope, there is no need to use the wax when you can wrap the whole thing with saran wrap.

Wax become messier with plastic.

valenciaguy · Posted: Thu 22 Mar, 2007 7:06 pm

Ok thanks I will stick with the saran until I get more grafting tape.

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Ned · Posted: Fri 23 Mar, 2007 12:02 am

I don't know if they still sell it, but I have used the 1/2" green vinyl tape that you use to see sold in garden shops as plant tie tape. It is the same tape that is used in the "tie tools" nurseries use to tie plants to stakes.

Ned

Millet · Posted: Fri 23 Mar, 2007 12:56 am

I have also used rubber bands. Millet

JoeReal · Posted: Fri 23 Mar, 2007 2:47 am

Yes the "sturdy garden tie" which is a brand name for the green vinyl tape is the favorite of Gene Lester. He prefers the 1" wide. After T-budding, he would wrap the stem tightly and then staple the tape together. After two weeks he would then remove it to allow growth.

JoeReal · Posted: Fri 23 Mar, 2007 2:51 am

Millet wrote:

I have also used rubber bands. Millet

My very first successful T-budding was using only rubber band. this is the rubber band that is used to hold together the Sunday newspaper. Success rate by then was 1 out of 3, but I did more than 3 buds at a time for adding a cultivar and so was always 100% successful when it comes to adding another cultivar even though my bud take was poor, using plain rubber bands and nothing else.

Nowadays with parafilm, rubber band and parafilm combo, it is 99.9% certain with just a single bud. And I always try to add at least 3 buds every time.

valenciaguy · Posted: Fri 23 Mar, 2007 9:16 am

Also what is the time to graft to apple and pear, just before i wakes up, or after bud break?

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JoeReal · Posted: Fri 23 Mar, 2007 11:45 am

valenciaguy wrote:

Also what is the time to graft to apple and pear, just before i wakes up, or after bud break?

I have discussed various timing issues for all kinds of fruits in other threads before.

You can graft apples, pears, quinces the whole year round if you wanted to and it will be successful if you know how to adjust your techniques based on the demands of each season.

What I usually do is to graft apples, pears, other pomes during the dead of winter. They can be dormant grafted with good success rates, so it frees me up to graft other more delicate cultivars later in the season. During this time, chip budding, cleft grafting, whip and tongue would be my method of choice.

Later as the season progresses, the buds begin to swell and the bark begins to slip, I would switch to bark grafting (see my pictorial demo in another forum) and T-budding. As long as the bark slips, you can do bark grafting well into fall, but during summer, you will have to use aluminum foil to reflect off the extra sunshine or your grafts would be toast.

Arguably, the best time to graft for most fruit species is when the buds begin to swell. So you can see that you will be pulled from all directions if you are grafting thousands in a season, so that is why I graft year round and for those that can be grafted during lean times outside of this best time, I graft them. This included plums, apricots, pluots all of which I have proven to respond very well to dormant season grafting with close to 100% success rate.

The big bonus of grafting when the buds begin to swell is that you are sure that there is sap flow going into the scionwood when the scionwood decides to wake up after grafting. And this would help a lot especially if you are grafting an early bloomer unto a late bloomer stock. Imagine a scionwood wanting to push out and there is no juice coming to it. Sometimes, if you graft during the dormant season, some of them would fail if such timing discrepancies exists. However, if you graft when there sap flow, like during the bud swell, an early season cultivar would be successful and the next year's winter, it will "learn to wait" for the sap flow properly, and it will still bloom slightly (as a compromise) ahead because it will be the first one to demand the juices, and there would be no problem with timing of sap flow. If you cover the scionwood properly against all moisture loss when dormant grafting, the graft rarely fails even if there are discrepancies in their dormancy breaking time.

But as always, if you are doing multi-multi-multi grafts like I have been doing in my itty-bitty yard, the earliest varieties will go to the north side of the canopies. The earliest varieties will most likely be very vigorous when you have various types on one tree, so as not to shade the others out, the late bloomers are oriented towards the south and the earliest are oriented towards the north. This is assuming that you get the same quality type of scionwood.

Sometimes there are quality issues in the scionwood that you get, especially if they are from exchanges and they will not perform as expected even if you have the correct cultivars. For example, if the scionwood material came from a younger vigorous branch, the vigor will be carried over if you also graft it unto vigorous branch. If the scionwood material is from a fruiting mature branch, it will be a slow grower on the destination branch even if it is an early cultivar. And for this reason and others, I'll have to regraft for corrections to balance out the canopy. I would usually regraft the slow growers unto the limbs of fast growers and vice versa. After about 2 to 4 regrafting cycles you will achieve a very good balanced canopy that you can leave alone for a long time, unless like me, you will graft yearly anyway...

bencelest · Posted: Fri 23 Mar, 2007 5:14 pm

I am beginning to think that plout is the easies and adaptable to graft based on my experience. I graft them to peaches , plums and apricot and they are all have about 1 inch buds at this time. I even used it a stick that is a bout 2 feet long ad stick it to the ground as a asupport for my cherimoya and now it is growing and seemed like it has more longer buds than my cherimya.

valenciaguy · Posted: Fri 23 Mar, 2007 6:49 pm

My scion is coming from a program out in B.C. that is commercial, and is coming around mid April which will give me enough time and actually that is when most tree buds swell.

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