Fruit Tree Grafting: Summer Field Notes

first crop of wild plums growing on this draft, it's a four year american wild plum old graft onto chokecherry. it's flowered the last two years, but needed a second genetically distinct branch added for pollination. Prunus americana is reasonably graft compatible with chokecherry, not every graft I've survived this long but success seems more related specifics about the tree like how hard it was pruned, did the growth harden off at the end of the first season. after the second year survival has been very high. here at least I'll get some plums to grow in the nursery, usually I have to travel to collect them.

apples fruiting on wild saskatoon rootstock. a selection of apples grafted about shoulder high onto established saskatoon/ serviceberry, up high above the deer browse line. at three years old, showing good graft compatibility and precocity. is this supposed to be possible? well.. good question. I seem to have stumbled across something that works, similar to how quince is a good rootstock for pear.

bei tang graft, before I chopped it up for cuttings. it's a recently named hybrid cherry plum, a cross between sapalta and manchurian apricot.

super dwarf apples, september ruby grafted onto saskatoon. I did these three years ago and finally got a cage around them last summer, otherwise rabbits. a fun result I think.

budding, I'm a little hit and miss on it. will see how these do, it's chokecherry.

double worked plum. on the rootstock is a short length of Prunus americana, and then on top Yakima plum, a cold hardy european plum. will it survive -40? we'll find out, it's in a semi sheltered location, five ft off the ground, and on a super cold hardy rootstock (chokecherry), all of these factors might improve winter survival. just in case I'll cut scions in november.

prairie magic apple grafted onto saskatoon.

H. sinensis grafted to Hippophae rhamnoides, so it's a larger later ripening sea buckthorn species, female and full of fruit grafted to a male shelterbelt variety.

black ice plums growing on chokecherry with an american wild plum interstem. one of a few dozen cultivars I'm trying on these interstems this year. vigorously growing chokecherry with a trunk 1" or more, in good sunlight are suitable. I expect the plum to grow a little larger so still waiting to see how balanced the tree is, some of my 2-3 year old grafts may need a stake. I'm seeing americana match the vigour of chokecherry better than toka, which while takes and grows well, the prunus simonii in it is too vigorous and needs some pruning to manage the size. so does americana, trial is ongoing. the deer did some pruning for me this week, good that all of my grafts are up high. #grafting

intergeneric grafts on saskatoon, first one is hawthorn, which is producing lots of growth with crazy 3" thorns, second is double worked pears, an interstem of a fast growing variety topped with favoritka red, a hard to find russian pear. if you make it to the last one it's a 3 minute walk through of this block of grafts in a partly shaded forest area #grafting

apricot on chokecherry with americana interstem. i did around 4-5 branches at shoulder height, growing good so far. this double working is basically doing two grafts at once, first the american wild plum goes onto the stock tree, and a few inches up that graft, another scion is grafted on. it only take a couple minutes for each one, we'll see how it grows.

western sandcherry grafted to *chokecherry*, showing some red indicating stress, early dormancy, no real growth so at least this graft unlikely to pull through. compared to prunus americana grafts which have dark green leaves and a couple ft of growth. I still want sandcherries up high, so will try again next spring with an interstem.

favoritka pear, on saskatoon 3 year old graft first year flowering. determined to get to try these russian pears this year, maybe I should do a japanese style protective bag over it.

apple grafts on saskatoon. growing better than you would expect, I have at least a dozen from 2022 growing healthy and some of those are fruiting. no indications of incompatibility really, growth is slower but grafts can still put on 12-18" in a year which is in the healthy range.

purple/red leafed chokecherry, fun to graft these around and see the color change in june. the new leaves are green and change to purple after about a month

checking apple grafts on saskatoon. some were done late spring, fun to see them decide to flower. two year old grafts have some fruit, first time.

one of our sweet cherry grafts onto pin cherry, well it made a flower. notable, first Prunus avium flower at our nursery, maybe the first one I've seen. for sure the first sweet cherry blossom on a pin cherry tree #cherryblossom

new pear grafts, about three weeks for them to leaf out, this is when I start to check for rootstock shoot extension and keep it managed, these are top worked saskatoon trees so it's good to leave some lower growth to keep the tree healthy

short interstems of toka on this combo brookred and brookgold plum grafted onto chokecherry.

walk around my experimental pear orchard, grafted onto saskatoon. five min video. maybe I should be shooting for youtube, really this is mostly for my own video documentation, or if you’ve thought about growing pears on saskatoon rootstock this give you an idea of what 1-3 year old grafts can look like. site conditions will change the results, this is on established trees at shoulder height to stay above the browse line, also dense with some shade. hoping to start getting fruit next year, and I expect most will need staking.

a few apples ok this multi-grafted tree, starting to get some color

two chokecherry cultivars, first one is lee red, second is probably Schubert. they graft easily onto wild chokecherry and add some color. Lee Red has larger leaves on my grafts, not sure if that’s common, it does seem to grow vigorously. #chokecherry #grafting

apples I grafted onto a wild crab in our yard a few years ago, lost the tag and forget the variety. norkent?

first fruit, this is apple on saskatoon. It’s a small graft in the shade from two years ago, but hey it’s an apple growing on a saskatoon tree.

more photos of baker’s gold apricot. my review is they’re good, similar to ones i’ve had from the grocery store, larger. clingstone, not tart, mild flavour, hey it’s the first apricot I’ve had in a long while and a month earlier than any plums around, a real treat. planning to graft some of these for next year, my sand cherry seedlings are sizing up.

experimental apple grafts from 2022, finally caged. a year ago they were a rabbit’s lunch and now have recovered, maybe 12” of growth this summer. these are on saskatoon which I expect to dwarf them, no one seems to know if it’s compatible as an apple rootstock. for new grafts I start at shoulder height to be above the browse line.

hawthorn grafted onto saskatoon. There’s an interesting overlap of graft compatibility in the Rosacea family between several genuses, pear and quince, saskatoon and aronia, hawthorn and apple, and I have to assume more if you find the right interstems. there are some cool combinations to be tried and make the most inteteresting trees, these ones if the grafts endure will have purple berries and also 2” thorns with clusters of red fruit. #grafting

spring american wild plum grafts onto chokecherry. maybe six weeks old. I trim back most of the epicormic growth but not all of it, actually letting it reduce vigour improves hardening off for the first winter. #grafting

graft union for this one year old red leafed malus baccata on our native amelanchier alnifolia, an unusual combination that seems to be healthy and somewhat graft compatible. #grafting #applegrafting

grafting wild canadian plum

large pear and apple trees top worked last year into multiple cultivars mostly as a store for scion wood. #grafting

chip budding apricots hardy to zone 3 -40C. this year i have them on mustang, next year also onto western sand cherry. If you have labels ready then it’s easy to keep track and just graft lots of variety. #grafting

chip budding this weekend, plums and apricots. #grafting

finished budding plums and apricots for the year I think. Maybe I’ll do more, not sure how late it can go. In warmer places I hear July is the right time, but here early august seems like the right timing to have mature budwood. #grafting

sweet mountain ash grafts on saskatoon. #grafting

checking apple grafts top worked onto saskatoon this spring. #grafting

plum grafts from one month ago are starting to take off #grafting

red leafed chokecherry grafted onto wild chokecherry. #grafting

toka plum on chokecherry grafted last spring.

block of black chokecherry, prunus virginiana var melanocarpa grafted over to an assortment of other prunus to trial compatibility, grow out budwood for august budding onto rootstocks, and to produce softwood for rooting. So far this season take was high across every prunus species, and at 6-8 weeks every graft that leafed out continues to grow. Trialing various pruning and interstem interventions to keep as many growing until dormancy as I can, which can them be a reserve of dormant scion wood for next spring. Eventually I’ll have an orchard of mature prunus for a more permanent resource, but chokecherry being common and plentiful here is working well so far. #propagation

red siberian crabapple selection grafted to saskatoon / serviceberry one month ago. Out of all the apple grafts I’ve trialed onto A. alnifolia this one has had the best early growth. #grafting

on old harbin pear tree top worked to produce scion wood. Working over old trees like this can take one scion and multiply it for the next grafting season. This spring I used many of the scions to graft new pears, and also to graft onto saskatoon. #propagation

some late summer t budding, apple on saskatoon. the bark is still slipping on some trees. on smaller stocks or if the bark or if the bark doesn’t want to cooperate then a chip bud works. These can be done late in the season because they just need take and then usually wait for spring to grow. #budgrafting #tbudgrafting #grafting

chip budding plums. We’ve had by far the best result with Toka plum this year in our experimental grading trials onto wild rootstock, some of our grafts done in may have grown 4’ with secondary scaffolds. We’re now chip budding other cultivars onto Toka to use it as in interstem. #grafting

Whip & tongue graft union. Field grafted domestic plum on Prunus virginiana at nine weeks. This year my hobby experiment as an aside to our nursery has been to explore graft compatibility with wild rootstocks, include the P. virginiana and A. alnifolia around our property. So far results have been better than expected. At the very minimum we have a surplus of scion wood for bud grafting our mustang rootstocks this month and dormant plum, pear and apple scions next year’s grafting season. Best case these are long lived, or a more tempered expectation is that some of them will out preform others. A range of grafting techniques, timing, rootstock / frame tree size, and caliper were selected. Two dozen zone 3 hardy plum, a dozen pear and as many apple were grafted all around to see how well they would grow and collect real data on compatibility. So far in the first season we’re seeing vigorous healthy growth across the board. #grafting

modified cleft graft, you can see the small flap on the left. we’re unwrapping plum grafts this week and checking on how they’ve healed, we did most of these grafts in early May. Our pear and apple grafts can wait a while because we did them early June when the trees were coming out of dormancy. #grafting

we had a wind storm this morning that broke off this grafted plum branch (shown upside down), there was a couple feet of flush growth above it. at 8 weeks there’s more girdling than expected. Maybe I wrapped it too tight. One thing to pay close attention to is the strength of the graft union, if the tissues are less than compatible it won’t be strong. In this case I think it’s a girdled branch. I’ll be removing the budding tape on all of our early May grafts this week and inspecting them. #grafting

summer update for our plum on wild choke cherry grafts. Nearly every prunus variety we tried has grown, the most vigorous growth on this set of trees on a sunny hill. Success with this type of grafting in the first year seems to depend on the age and location of the root stock, as well as the amount of undergrowth and management of new suckering growth. I held off trying this for years because of anecdotal reports that it wouldn’t work. My approach here is to question assumptions, research old studies where it was tried and do it for myself, there are quite a few variables, including genetic compatibility variation with specific individuals within a species. Choke cherry is prolific across forested areas in Canada, but there are no wood lots, parks, hiking trails or backyards full of them made into food forests by grafting them over.

Fall Red apple on wild saskatoon in its second season. At the end of grafting season last year I tried a few malus on amelanchier intergeneric grafts. It was july before they took so little growth last year, but I happy to see most of the grafts survived and and growing this summer. Fall red seems to have the strongest growth, but more trials and seasons of observation will tell. For now at minimum I know how to save left over scion wood if needed. What’s promising just like our prunus trials is that we don’t need every cultivar to do well on saskatoon, we just need one and if can serve as an interstem. Our property happens to have established saskatoon underbrush almost everywhere mixed with the choke cherry and hazel, and I’m excited to find out what can be grafted onto it and exactly how long lived these grafts can be. The trees live for maybe 40 years and will certainly be more dwarfing that a full sized apple rootstock. #applegrafting #serviceberry

plum frameworked onto choke cherry at five weeks. #grafting #plumgrafting #intergeneric

Plum grafts on wild choke cherry. Our grafts were all done in the first three weeks of May and many are showing signs of growth, so a successful union so far. The take rate seems to correlate with age of the root stock and competing vegetation on it more than shade, type of graft or plum cultivar. In the fall we’ll post a spreadsheet with some data, this is a multi year project to determine compatibility in cold hardy Prunus cultivars on the most prolific and hardy wild Prunus rootstock (Prunus virginiana) in our climate zone 3, southern Manitoba. #grafting #chokecherry

nanking cherry grafted on wild chokecherry. (Prunus tomentosa on Prunus virginiana). Will it take? I’m hopeful for this combination. Also it’s fun when scions blossom, feels like a small success. #grafting #nankingcherry #cherryblossom #cherryblossoms

small choke cherry tree grafted over to plums at three weeks. keeping the under growth continually rubbed off to ensure all of the growth is focused on the grafts seems key. For larger trees Instead of defoliating I’ve been topping all the other branches to try and give the grafts apical dominance. #grafting

apples grafted on saskatoon / service berry last month. September ruby, chestnut crab, Goodland, norkent. So far they’re healthy and growing as fast as anything I grafted on an apple tree this year. There’s at least early indication of good compatibility with these cold hardy cultivars. could this be just an excellent cold hardy dwarfing rootstock? Last winter we had a dozen nights colder than -35C, and the saskatoons are bullet proof to the cold. #applegrafting

goodland apples are flowing this week. This tree and a few scions I’ve grafted out are all flowering at once. Takes a late spring for an apple tree to wait for the summer solstice to flower.

grafted plums are taking off. This one is Nanking cherry on the left and Toka plum on the right. These are putting on better growth than our orchard plum trees on their third leaf, the Prunus virginiana frame tree is well adapted to our sandy soil and puts on vigorous growth. How long will these grafts survive? Of the dozen various Prunus cultivars and species we grafted out this year will some of them have good compatibility? #grafting #plumtrees #chokecherry

progress on one of our multi grafted prunus virginiana. This size of tree seems to produce the most vigorous growth. #grafting #graftingplants #plumtree

apple grafted to Saskatoon #grafting

Toka plum grafted to wild choke cherry #prunus #grafting