So last year I grafted what to me was a lot of trees, mostly from scion wood I collected here, but also using scion wood I purchased. Most of these grafts failed, here are my observations as to why:
1. I was excited and grafted too early for the weather. As soon as the bark slipped I got to work. Then we had cold weather and I think this ruined any fragile growth. I've since learned how to get grafts done earlier but the production system would add too much work for my one man operation.
2. I was excited to buy fancy grafting gadgets that would put fancy shapes in scion and rootstock. This made some of the precise knife work easier, seemed to have a good match of cambium layers. None of these styles of grafts survived!
What did work? Well I was very disappointed in how late the scion material came from one source last year, but it arrived well after any frost chances. More of this scion material lived through to this year than any other trees. By the time I got these scions I'd given up on fancy gadgets and was only doing three or four flap banana grafts. So this year I waited until much later to get started. Some of the early trees already have bud break, so exciting to see. Some of the root stock trees are larger so I am trying some bark grafts having had some success with those on my first Kanza trees.
