I grafted one of my sister's trees with some of the budwood I got from Joe yesterday-- in the rain. Is that going to affect my chances of the buds taking?

I put a variegated pink lemon and a nules clementine on a meyer lemon seedling and I put the same 2 plus a washington naval and a seedless midnight valencia on her grapefruit.

How does a grapefruit interstock influence the fruit? I already have an ambersweet orange and a lisbon lemon on that tree and the ambersweet bud has started growing-- the lemon has just recently been forced.

If you read my notes, I strongly advise against grafting in the rain. Your chances of take will significantly diminish, but it doesn't mean you can't have some success. What worries me also is that diseases could be easily transferred if the disease pressure is high. But if your area has no diseases, the rain is virtually very clean with no fungal spores trapped from the air as they drizzle down, then it should be successful. It is never in our case, and during the rains, no matter how light, the success rate had only been less than one out of 4.

I was thinking that rain would have both positive and negative effects--good being that the buds would not dry out--bad of course being the transfer of bacteria and disease, but I have to use the opportunities I get. Many of the grafts were completed without rain, but at least a couple were completed during a light rain.

I will let you know how they do.

I had shared my chestnug grafting experience with Joe a couple of months ago. I was top-working about 175 8 year-old trees and had two laborers working with me (helping remove existing limbs, preparing a limb just before grafting, and then taping and sealing after I made the grafts). This took a few weeks (some grafts were 15 feet above ground level, so this was a slow process) and during that time we had rain on a few days. One day it rained hard for an hour but the laborers wanted to continue (commute expense was a factor) so we continued grafting. The biggest problem I encountered is difficulting getting the masking tape (what I use for sealing chestnut grafts) to stick. I usually have over a 99% take rate but over my entire project this dropped to about 98% and I attribute that to the use of hired help and being able to be a little less selective with scionwood than I'd like. I only noticed about 2 grafts out of about 20 during the hard rain that failed to take. I have no idea if chestnuts are more disease resistant than citrus or not. I use modified rind bark grafts which isn't much different than the citrus grafts Joe taught me. Maybe urban settings have more disease floating around?

Well Joe, your prediction of reduced success in the rain came true-- only 1 of six grafts made it-- a washington naval bud on my sister Beth's grapefruit. Her grapefruit now has an ambersweet, washington naval and a lisbon lemon.

I just dropped by my sister's house (Beth) today to check on the bud I put on in the rain--the one that made it--I was going to try and force it, but when I found it, it had already sprouted and was over 6" long! Looking at the date of the original post that was less than 6 weeks ago.

Her other buds were starting a second flush as well.