Normally, this new growth can be found out on the tips of twigs high up on the sunny side of the tree. Not all water sprouts are new growth, however. Be sure that any water sprout selected for scionwood has no side branches or twigs. Collect the proper scionwood cuttings in late January to mid February. The cuttings should ideally be eight to ten inches in length and approximately the diameter of a pencil, although pieces of a smaller length and diameter can be successfully grafted.
Bundle the scionwood together and label each variety separately. Wrap the bundles in a damp not wet paper towel and enclose tightly in Saran Wrap or a plastic bag. Pack the cuttings inside a cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels or in a padded envelope purchased from the Post Office. Secondly, the cleft graft limits numbers of scions per scaffold to two. Therefore, many delay the work until spring to use the bark graft method where more than two scions can be inserted on a scaffold more insurance depending on the diameter of the scaffold one scion stick per 2-inch in circumference.
The skill needed to make slope cuts on scions requires less practice and skill than the cleft graft scion preparation. The best time is when the cambium is active or bark is slipping for bark grafts, bridge grafts and inarching. Inarching is a practice where suckers that have sprouting from the rootstock can be brought up to bridge a damaged or injured union.
It also refers to planting a bare root tree or rootstock adjacent to a tree and grafting the top of the tree into the bark of the target tree. Once the season progresses and trees experience a drought stress in summer, the cambium slows in activity and so does the opportunity to graft. For this reason, scion wood needs to be collected now while dormant and stored for use some four to seven weeks later.
Techniques such as bridge grafting and inarching are used to overcome severe damage to trunks caused by mice and rabbits or bypass dying unions, often caused by viruses such as brown line in plum and black line in walnuts.
Select scion wood from healthy, virus-free plants. Try to avoid trees older than eight to 10 years of age as they have likely bloomed for at least five to seven years or more and possibly contracted pollen-born virus diseases. This wood can also be purchased for grafting. Limit wood to one-year-old wood. This is absolutely crucial to the success of any grafting you do from these scions.
Fruit trees are dormant through the winter months, so material can be collected any time until about February. The best time to cut your scion is just before you graft with it as scion wood can lose its vitality as it dries out over time.
However this is not always possible, and sometimes you will need to store the wood before cutting it. If you cut your scion material early in winter you need to store it longer in cold storage sealed in a plastic bag. For this reason it is generally advised to cut in the late winter rather than early, minimising the time in storage. The size, shape and number of scion wood twigs you collect is going to depend on what you are using them for.
For bench grafting, you are aiming to collect straight growth of roughly pencil thickness, which is the rough thickness of the rootstock you will be grafting to. Having the rootstock and scion material the same thickness enables more cambial contact so increases the likelihood and strength of your graft join. Cut these right back to just before the growth scar. The end will dry out and be cut off before grafting, so this gives you the most amount of year-wood to work with.
On the terminal shoots, the best scions are produced from the basal two-thirds of the shoots. Buds in this portion of the shoot are mature and have short internodes. Buds growing at the very tip of the shoot should be discarded because they are often too succulent and are too low in stored carbohydrates to produce vigorous growth after grafting.
Using scion buds that have begun to grow while in cold storage will result in grafting failure.
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