Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Grafting deciduous and evergreen trees in Sacramento Valley

 For winter grafting of deciduous trees the wood should be collected in December-January.  Some late developing trees like persimmons and nuts can be harvested later.  The stone fruit trees can start developing in already in February.  The dormant wood is required for grafting, make sure to collect these early in winter.

Pom fruits and stone fruits can be grafted in January - March.  Cherry wood does not store well and can start pushing buds in the fridge.  Make sure to graft these early.

Below are the images of the same tree.

One year after grafting

One month after grafting
Bark grafting large topped rootstock

Persimmons, figs, mulberries, paw paws, che, jujube, nuts should be grafted later, in late February - March when you see the first movement on the rootstock. 

Feijoa is a special case of evergreens and can be hard to graft. I had a good experience grafting them in the ground in early April.  However grafting later in the season especially right before the heat waves reduced my grafting success.  Grafting onto the in-ground trees is always more efficient than grafting potted plants. The latest trend is to graft them in February. This is my plan for this season.  Feijoa wood collection and grafting can be done at the same time, regardless of the season. Feijoa wood also stores well in a fridge for a few months.

Avocado, white sapote, and citrus grafting almost always works for me, but the best time is the early spring, March - April. These do not store well in the fridge, and I try to use them in under a week time.

The type of grafts does not seem to influence my success rate.  I mostly do clefts, bark grafts, and chip buds. Connecting the cambial layers as perfect as possible at least on one side is very important.

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



7 comments:

  1. What are you using as the sealing compound on the bark graft?

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    1. That was Tanglefoot Tree Wound Pruning Sealer & Grafting Compound. Now I prefer to use the yellow Doc Farwell's Grafting Seal.

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  2. I was impressed with how fast those avocado scions arrived after I ordered them, and you even included a bonus! Thank you so much.

    Looking at the pictures on your avocado variety post, it looks like the “Second Red” variety has an impressive seed:flesh ratio. Was that just an artifact of the way it was cut/camera angle? Or does it truly have a tiny pit?

    Thanks for taking the time and initiative to investigate, propagate and share new and interesting varieties. I only recently discovered your blog after someone linked to it from the comments section of Greg Alder’s blog, but I am glad I did. I really appreciate your attention to detail and scientific perspective of your posts. I am learning a lot.


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    1. I have not gotten my own Second Red fruits yet. The fruit you see in the picture was from the mother tree and it was a little deformed. It's hard to compete with rodents on a public tree. As of now, I only can say that the fruit quality is excellent. For the flesh to seed ratio I need more fruits.

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    2. The last two comments are about the avocados described at https://fruitsandgardening.blogspot.com/2020/03/cold-hardy-avocados-for-sacramento.html

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  3. I have been successful grafting deciduous fruits here in the central valley but never avocados. After growing seeds from the store, I was lucky enough to be able to order 3 varieties of avocado scions from the 6-1-24 sale. They arrived 6-4-24 in great shape. I even got 2 extra/bonus scions of two of the varieties. Thank You! I grafted trees on 6-5-24 early AM. Well it's 6-28-24 and they are all successful and pushing leaves. One of them "Long South Gate" even started pushing flower buds which I removed, lol. I am so stoked. I am looking forward to the next sale. Thank you again Marta for being so helpful.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you so much! Good luck with the grafts!

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