Grafting cherry onto plum

Here are the results of my attempts to graft various cherry varieties onto the Shiro branches of my combination plum.

Grafting directly onto plum 

In February of 2015 I made 2 grafts of Bing and 2 grafts of Rainier onto Shiro plum.  They both took initially, but one graft of each  variety dried up by the end of the summer.  Two other grafts survived through the winter and even bloomed in spring of 2016.  None made fruits, and they both dried up by July 2016.  These grafts had only developed leaves and flowers from their buds. No new shoots have ever emerged from them.

Grafting onto plum using Adara interstem

In January 2016 Andy Mariani recommended to use Adara as interstem for grafting cherry scions onto plum trees.  He also suggested to get both grafts going in the same year. The cherry chip-buds can be grafted onto Adara scions before attaching them onto plum.  This was exactly what I did in January 2016.  Two chip buds each of the following cherry varieties were attached onto Adara scions:

1. Duke

2. Noir de Chavanne

3. Coral Champagne

4. Sour Cherry Bell Magnifique

5. Early Purple Guigne

Then Adara scions were bark grafted onto Shiro. I used nail gun to attach the scions initially, and then also fixed them onto the branches with grafting tape.

And finally I covered the cuts and the exposed areas of scions with the grafting compound.

All of the above pictures were taken on January 24, 2016.

Four out of five grafts took (the failed one was Early Purple Guigne), and they all grew up significantly. The developed shoots were between 2 and 4-foot long in July, and some of them needed pruning.

Bellow are the pictures of four successful grafts, taken on July 7, 2016.

Duke and sour cherry Bell Magnifique

Coral Champagne

Noir de Chavanne

I was surprised that the sour cherry graft took, but more time is needed to tell how successful sour cherry will be on this plum.  I could not find any info on Adara used as rootstock for sour cherries. Just one doc on-line states its broad compatibility with cherries.

Check our sales site if we have the scions available reallygoodplants.com

Avocado grafting

Two types of grafts worked for me in spring of 2016

1. Grafting onto small seedlings.  I used Duke seedlings that I started in the fall of 2015.
2. Side-wedge grafting onto strong water shoots of mature Mexicola tree (planted 15 years ago).

Grafting onto small Duke seedlings

Both normal cleft and reverse cleft worked fine.  In early April 2016 the following grafts were made/succeeded

1 Reed/1
2 Duke/2
4 Second Red/2
4 Royal-Wright/4

Cleft graft on Duke seedling, July 2016.  One of the slower growing ones.  Two faster growing Royal-Wright and both Second Red were planted in ground in the end of June.

July graft

One more seedling graft was made on July 4 using wood from Harvey's seedling tree.  I used reverse cleft for this one.

Seedling graft made on July 4, before and after wrapping the joint.

Side-wedge grafting onto water sprouts of mature Mexicola

In early April 2016 the following grafts were made/succeeded

3 Duke/2

3 Aravaipa/3

Two out of three Aravaipa grafts are very vigorous and reached few feet by July 4.  Below in the picture is the branch with all Duke and Aravaipa grafts.

Close up of the most vigorous Aravaipa graft is below

July Side-Wedge grafts

On July 4th three more side-wedge grafts were made onto the same Mexicola tree using scion wood of Harvey's seedling tree.  Two of them are shown below.

I'll update this page on the progress of July 4th grafts in few months.