Overall Grafting 2009 was a Success

It’s been a while since I did all those grafts in spring of 2009.  It is now Fall of 2010.  The scions that took had a full two seasons to grow.  Most of the scions took except for the experimental grafts.

The ones that failed were the cross genus grafts between the apples and pears.  Although I had one success before grafting an apple scion to a pear tree, I was not able to repeat that.  Also, except for the branch shown above, all the cherry grafts did not take.  While not having more cherry grafts take is a disappointment, it was not a big surprise.   Most of the branches I got from my friend Dave were mature branches.  Most of them had
flower buds and not a lot of leave buds.  In a couple of case, there wre no buds a all.  I was just playing around to see if any of the scions will take.  The good news is that I have one good cherry graft and the scion is growing very well on the side of a big tree as shown above.  I am looking forward to use scions from this growth to “upgrade” my other cherry trees in the backyard.

The following are some sample results from the successful grafts of 2009.

Before I show the other grafts, the above is a closeup of the cherry graft.  It appears to have developed a strong and healthy bond.  A lot of leaves came out and new braches are developing.

One sad news is that my Fuji apple tree that had all the apple variety grafted from before died this year.  I moved it from the shady back yard to the south-facing front yard thinking it would get more sunlight.  Due to the poor soil condition and dampness, the bottom of the trunk near the roots had some rot and a lot of holes bore by insects.  The move was made in early Spring this year.  Initially, leaves were coming out and a lot of flowers blossomed.  A lot of apples were formed from many of the grafted branches also.  I was hoping to get many kinds of apples from the tree this year while always eying the insect bitten trunk near the root.

I don’t know if the death of the apple tree was due to the extensive damage to the root during the transplant or the insect destruction on the trunk.  Upon returning from the July 4th week off, a big portion of the leaves on the apple tree turned brown although we had a neighbor water the tree for us.  It got worse and eventually, all the leaves turned brown.  Good thing that I preserved some of the tree via grafts to my neighbor’s Golden Delicious tree.

On the left is the one of the three scions that I grafted onto the neighbor’s apple tree. This is a thin branch but it appears to be growing well.  Unfortunately, the other two sucessfully grafted branches were “prunned” away last spring by my neighbor.


Another lesson learned about grafting to the extermities of a tree, especially when it is not my own tree.  My neighbor did not mean to cut off the grafts.  He was just getting too carried away with the pruning and forgot about the grafts.  The green grafting tapes blend real well with the rest of the tree.  Maybe I should switch to orange grafting tapes.  Branches at the end of trees are venerable to being elminated either by natural cause or get removed by animal or people.

The remaining graft as shown on the left is closed to one of the main branches of the tree and I marked it with a large loop of the grafting tape.  Since this is not my tree and is in my neighbor’s front lawn, leaving any more prominent sign will probably not be a polite thing to do.

Anyway, here is a close up of the apple tree graft.  Since the apple scions were very thin, I had to use a slant graft.  It is not very clear in the picture.

Look closely at the center of the picture and you should be able to see the graft.

Finally, I want to show you a one of the pear grafts.  This was a thicker scion that was about 1/3 inch in diameter.  The graft is on the right hand of the “Y” at the bottom of the photo.


I did a whip and tongue graft.  In just two seasons, the scion really took off and had generated its own very healthy and robust branches.  This was one of the Yali pear scions grafted on one of my friend’s brown Asian pear tree.

My friend’s pear trees are in the back yard unobstructed by any other trees or structures.  They receive full sunlight all day long.  All the scions that I grafted took and this is an example of how all the other scions are.  This shows how good condition trees paired with fresh cut scions could produce perfect grafts.

Some of the scions developed branches that bore large fruits.  Usually I would remove the fruits from new grafted branches to avoid breakage of new grafts.  However, I actually was not able to get to the trees to tend to the grafts till now - the second summer since the originals graft.  The green tapes were left on all last year and again through the Spring and part of the Summer this year.  It was amazing that the green tape did not choke the branch and that the weight of the fruits did not break the new grafted branches.

Here is a closeup of the successful whip and tongue graft.  You can see the brown mark from the green tape that stayed for a bit too long.  Luckily, the strength of the tree and scion survived my abuse of leaving the green tape on for over a year long.

In conclusion, the grafts of 2009 has been successful in spite of a few set backs that were somewhat expected.  The best part is that at least one of the cherries took and I was able to preserve part of my Fuji tree on a neighbor’s apple tree.  I will probably get another apple tree and graft my original Fuji branches back to it.