Scion Wood

Now is the time (in So Cal anyway) to be taking scion wood and grafting your fav fruit trees. If you have fruit trees and haven't done any grafting I would advise you to try it or if you've tried it and failed (as I have) try it again. Very cool. Last year I had many successful grafts and looking forward to seeing that come to fruition (literally) this spring. Going to be trying avacado and citrus this time. I belong to the Rare Fruit Growers and they give a seminar and scion wood exchange every year. Great club to be into if you like that sort of thing.

so tell me...is scion wood the wood from the plant you want to graft? and it's grafted onto rootstock?

scion wood is the budded wood from the tree that you want more of and it is grafted onto either rootstock or limbs/trunks/branches/stumps.
Many diff styles but all accomplishing the same

thx doser...

I have a peach tree that throws really good fruit. Nice plump tasty peaches. It's dying and the termites are so bad that I;m afraid there is no hope so I grafted it onto a couple of weed stonefruit trees that came up on their own and WHAM!! Two new peach trees to take it's place. I'm expecting fruit this season. Pretty cool. It was my first successful graft so I was pretty happy. I'm hooked now. Air layering is my next hurdle. You get a nice size clone doing the air layering.

Spent today grafting. And planting but mostly grafting. Hoping to introduce several new fruits but mostly just lengthen the harvest on our trees. We eat everything. We can and cook and roast and mash and prepare about everything we grow so sometimes we can get a little overwhelmed with one variety. If half the apricot puts out some pluots after the apricots are gone then we score a bonus fruit harvest and since it occupies the space on the apricot tree we dont get overwhelmed with aps although we never have yet. Love apricots. Planted about twenty grape vines in ten diff varieties. Put them in pots and will have to build an arbor when I get a chance and plant them there. I used to be in the logging industry (Sorta) and I have access to some black oak poles. All nice and twisty that will make a bad ass arbor.
Anyway, nice way to spend a Sat. but it was an awful lot like work after a few hours. Oh. and put in (just replanted and mulched) a strawberry bed with a ground cover cloth top. Niiiiiiiiiiiiice.

i would liek to graft, im just still not sure of the process. it seems quite simple, but the simplest things seem to be the hardest some times.

any way i wanted to graft some fruit trees from work. is scion wood one of the easier things to graft on.
and could i graft a apple tree cutting to a cedar start?

what size do you usally graft the plants at? like what size of cut and what size of stock being grafted on to?

also do you use a binding compound?

mcpurple said:

i would liek to graft, im just still not sure of the process. it seems quite simple, but the simplest things seem to be the hardest some times.

any way i wanted to graft some fruit trees from work. is scion wood one of the easier things to graft on.
and could i graft a apple tree cutting to a cedar start?

what size do you usally graft the plants at? like what size of cut and what size of stock being grafted on to?

also do you use a binding compound?

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Well first off Mcpurple, grafting is quite easy as long as you have nimble fingers. The process is simple but the devil is in the details and in the execution of the graft. Scion wood is a piece of a branch that is taken from a donor tree to graft onto another tree so in that way you create another fruiting limb of the variety that the scion wood is. Scion wood is typically a number two pencil size piece of branch about three inches long.
Scion wood from stone fruit (Apricots,peaches, plums ) will graft readily onto any type of tree within that family. You can't graft scion wood from a stone fruit to a nut tree. wrong family but you can graft a walnut to a pecan or a peach to a nectarine.
There is a boatload of you tube videos on the techniques and there are several but they all involve lining up the cambium layer of both plants and sealing the wound. The cambium layer is the green layer between the brown bark and the white center wood. It is very thin and so the margin of error in the alignment is absolutely critical and must be very close to perfect for it to work. It sounds difficult but it just takes practice to be able to bind the graft while maintaining contact. It is worth the effort because from then on you have a tree with as many varieties as you want.
I think I have about a 70-80% success rate and I have just started doing it last season. This season I made at least forty new grafts. It was a long day I'm not going to lie but worth it.
On a side note , You guys growing sweet potatoes wherever you are? Man I love sweet potato hash browns in the morning but I don't think it's a viable crop in So Cal. Hard to get them due to transport regs.

I quit using all the grafting supplies and now I just bind the graft with teflon tape (it's what I had) to seal it and then over that I tape it with black electrical tape to exclude light and make it more rigid. Fancy tape will not make up for a sloppily aligned graft and bad tape will rarely effect the outcome of a perfectly executed graft. You can't buy a good graft. You have to make it and making it doesn't cost a thing.
You can take any size (almost) scion and stick it onto any size tree (literally) and as long as the two cambium layer align so that the juice of life can still flow it will work. It only has to happen in one spot on the graft. It is not necessary for the cambium layers to align perfectly all the way around the graft and you will notice that in some techniques it is impossible for both sides to align because of size differences but if one spot of cambium layer touches another well enough the juice will flow and the graft will be sucessful.

Sounds awesome. Airlayering is as much an art as grafting. I have a lychee and loquat I took from airlayers.
This year I started a dozen avocado pits so I can graft the scions to them in the summer. Great gifts and land fillers.

I haven't had any success with avos but I think that it's a personal problem. Everyone else does ok with them. I want to graft onto rootstock. That looks pretty easy to me and I can replant them anywhere I want. One of the benefits of air layering also iz being able to move the plant when it comes time to plant.

Citrus is a bitch to graft from my experience. Very small margin of error.

Aye, citrus is the most difficult from my experience as well. Even if you do it right, the rootstock can grow over the graft and the scion.
Airlayers are by far the better option - no grafting issues. I was gonna take some mango airlayers this year when the spring rains come.

What's up Pip. What have you done with airlayering successfully? The guy that was demoing was a little vague about the varieties that take well. He was pretty experienced but He had had a lot of duds also so he seemed reluctant to say "this variety or that type of plant works well"
You have a lot of trees?

doser said:

You have a lot of trees?

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Not really, tho'. I have a few fruit trees. The Choquette avocado, Brewster lychee(airlayer), three loquats - one, the Hardee was from an airlayer I did. The other two are from seed. Loquats do really well from seed, you just never know if you're going to get poor fruit or as in my case - a fucking awesome fruit that tastes like an apple-peach. What else... oh yeah the citrus. Dancy tangerine, ruby red grapefruit, and this sour orange I grafted myself. I have a sapling Barbados cherry I started from a cutting. Also a Meyer's lemon I started from a cutting. Oh yeah, and the Valencia Pride Mango.
I tried three airlayers on my avocado, but none of them took, in fact, two broke off 'cause I cut too deep and the one I didn't score deep enough to hit the heartwood. That was obviously one of the first attempts... I should try it again but I don't think avocado's airlayer. Propagation by seed and grafting. Mangos are supposed to airlayer. I think I'll try it on mine.
So, my general rule with airlayers is that if you can take a cutting you can take an airlayer. If it is particularly hard to take a cutting: such as the Lychee - good luck starting one of those from a cutting(apparently they won't, but they will airlayer) - take an airlayer. In my case, I took a cutting of the Meyer's lemon and it did fine. The general rule with lemons and limes is that they will usually(almost always) come true to fruit from cuttings alone. You can also airlayer lemons and limes - in fact you can get a mini tree started by taking an airlayer where the branch is the width of your thumb. Just get some vice grips or channel locks and rotate it around to grind down into the heartwood. You have to go pretty deep. The heartwood is pretty far down. It is super easy to not go deep enough or go so deep the branch just snaps off. I've snapped a lot of branches off. My friend's dad was pissed. Said I was too greedy goin' for the thumbsized one. He said it is always easier to start the smaller they are. He said I should be patient and watch it grow. He them proceeded to tell me about the lemons and limes from cuttings thing.

So Pip, when you said cut it down to the heartwood I thought you possibly did not know the diff between white wood and Heartwood but you're saying to cut through the whitewood down to the heartwood? You don't just take the bark and cambium layer off? This guy that I saw doing an air layering demo seemed to be concerned about the scar "bridging" and failing but I didn't hear him say to go down to the heartwood. That's a pretty significant cut. You obviously know more about it than I and I am not questioning your judgement but I want to understand the process.
Sounds like you have quite an orchard going. I have many of those varieties also. Gotta love having fresh fruit all summer eh? The more fruit I have, the more I appreciate it. The taste of ripe fruit is great but also and at least as important to me is not having all the chem's. I am a little busy right at the moment but deff. going for the permaculture setup next year. fish and fowl will be on the organic menu soon.

You have to expose the heartwood in order for the roots to grow out of them. It is preferable not to scar it, but it will still work if you do. You've gotta be a fucking surgeon not to scar it, but you won't scar the whole thing unless you cut all the way into the heartwood using your knife, pliers, channellocks, etc.
So yeah, you have to expose the heartwood 'cause that's where the roots come from. Sometimes it is pretty deep - a centimeter or more.
Some peeps say not to expose the heartwood and the rooting hormone will soak through the cambium layer. I think that is bullshit but these guys with freezers where they do their grafts and stuff says that's how it is done. Whenever I haven't cut down to the heartwood, the airlayer failed, the limb survived and the wound healed and scarred up instead of rooting.
Some trees have different thicknesses of the cambium layers, be careful.

Ok Pip, I hope I don't piss you off with this line of questioning but I used to own a sawmill so J jnow wood like the back of my hand and you apear tobe using heartwood interchangably with whitewood and I want to be clear on this. Not trying to be a Dick.
So from the outside going in we have bark andthat layer is the obvious except that most people would not know that if you peeled the bark off you wouldno doubt peel off the cambium layer underneath also that being a green slipsheet between the bark and the white wood. White wood would be the first real wood that you would encounter on the way into the branch. The whitewood surrounds the heatwood which is usually but not always a different color than the white wood which surrounds it. Are we still on the same page? So what I'm asking is are you basically taking off the bark and cambium layer or are you taking the white wood also?

White wood off too. If you do it correctly, the limb will either die(YOU FAIL!!) or grow roots. If you do incorrectly, it will stay alive, scar up, and you'll feel like an idiot. If the branch is really small, I like to take all the white wood off, 360 degrees - it roots faster and has more of them - just be careful bagging it up as you could pluck it right off. If the branch is larger, you may want to leave a tiny side on so that the limb doesn't just snap off in the wind.

What is really cool about airlayers is they were supposedly developed by the Chinese who would bag the roots and keep bagging them until the roots reached the ground - providing that scragly, runty, whatever limb with its own roots - in 10 or so years, that limb would be as large or larger than the apical meristem.
Here is some reading for you.
Lychee propagation:
Attempts to grow the lychee from cuttings have been generally discouraging, though 80% success has been claimed with spring cuttings in full sun, under constant mist and given weekly liquid nutrients. Ground-layering has been practiced to some extent. In China, air-layering (marcotting, or gootee) is the most popular means of propagation and has been practiced for ages. By their method, a branch of a chosen tree is girdled, allowed to callus for 1 to 2 days and then is enclosed in a ball of sticky mud mixed with chopped straw or dry leaves and wrapped with burlap. With frequent watering, roots develop in the mud and, in about 100 days, the branch is cut off, the ball of earth is increased to about 12 in (30 cm) in width, and the air-layer is kept in a sheltered nursery for a little over a year, then gradually exposed to full sun before it is set out in the orchard. Some air-layers are planted in large clay pots and grown as ornamentals.
The Chinese method of air-layering has many variations. In fact, 92 modifications have been recorded and experimented with in Hawaii. Inarching is also an ancient custom, selected cultivars being joined to 'Mountain' lychee rootstock.
In order to make air-layering less labor-intensive, to eliminate the watering, and also to produce portable, shippable layers, Colonel Grove, after much experimentation, developed the technique of packing the girdle with wet sphagnum moss and soil, wrapping it in moisture-proof clear plastic that permits exchange of air and gasses, and tightly securing it above and below. In about 6 weeks, sufficient roots are formed to permit detaching of the layer, removal of the plastic wrap, and planting in soil in nursery containers. It is possible to air-layer branches up to 4 in (10 cm) thick, and to take 200 to 300 layers from a large tree.
Studies in Mexico have led to the conclusion that, for maximum root formation, branches to be air-layered should not be less than 5/8 in (15 mm) in diameter, and, to avoid undue defoliation of the parent tree, should not exceed 3/4 in (20 mm). The branches, of any age, around the periphery of the canopy and exposed to the sun, make better air-layers with greater root development than branches taken from shaded positions on the tree. The application of growth regulators, at various rates, has shown no significant effect on root development in the Mexican experiments. In India, certain of the various auxins tried stimulated root formation, forced early maturity of the layers, but contributed to high mortality. South African horticulturists believe that tying the branch up so that it is nearly vertical induces vigorous rooting.
The new trees, with about half of the top trimmed off and supported by stakes, are kept in a shadehouse for 6 weeks before setting out. Improvements in Colonel Grove's system later included the use of constant mist in the shadehouse. Also, it was found that birds pecked at the young roots showing through the transparent wrapping, made holes in the plastic and caused dehydration. It became necessary to shield the air-layers with a cylinder of newspaper or aluminum foil. As time went on, some people switched to foil in place of plastic for wrapping the air-layers.
The air-layered trees will fruit in 2 to 5 years after planting, Professor Groff said that a lychee tree is not in its prime until it is 20 to 40 years old; will continue bearing a good crop for 100 years or longer. One disadvantage of air-layering is that the resultant trees have weak root systems. In China, a crude method of cleft-grafting has long been employed for special purposes, but, generally speaking, the lychee has been considered very difficult to graft. Bark, tongue, cleft, and side-veneer grafting, also chip-and shield-budding, have been tried by various experimenters in Florida, Hawaii, South Africa and elsewhere with varing degrees of success. The lychee is peculiar in that the entire cambium is active only during the earliest phases of secondary growth. The use of very young rootstocks, only 1/4 in (6 mm) in diameter and wrapping the union with strips of vinyl plastic film, have given good results. A 70% success rate has been achieved in splice-grafting in South Africa. Hardened-off, not terminal, wood of young branches 1/4 in (6 mm) thick is first ringed and the bark-ring removed. After a delay of 21 days, the branch is cut off at the ring, defoliated but leaving the base of each petiole, then a slanting cut is made in the rootstock 1 ft (30 cm) above the soil, at the point where it matches the thickness of the graftwood (scion), and retaining as many leaves as possible. The cut is trimmed to a perfectly smooth surface 1 in (2.5 cm) long; the scion is then trimmed to 4 in (10 cm) long, making a slanting cut to match that on the rootstock. The scion should have 2 slightly swollen buds. After joining the scion and the rootstock, the union is wrapped with plastic grafting tape and the scion is completely covered with grafting strips to prevent dehydration. In 6 weeks the buds begin to swell, and the plastic is slit just above the bud to permit sprouting. When the new growth has hardened off, all the grafting tape is removed. The grafting is performed in a moist, warm atmosphere. The grafted plants are maintained in containers for 2 years or more before planting out, and they develop strong taproots.
In India, a more recent development is propagation by stooling, which has been found "simpler, quicker and more economical" there than air-layering. First, air-layers from superior trees are planted 4 ft (1.2 m) apart in "stool beds" where enriched holes have been prepared and left open for 2 weeks. Fertilizer is applied when planting (at the beginning of September) and the air-layers are well established by mid-October and putting out new flushes of growth in November. Fertilizer is applied again in February-March and June-July. Shallow cultivation is performed to keep the plot weed-free. At the end of 2 1/2 years, in mid-February, the plants are cut back to 10 in (25 cm) from the ground. New shoots from the trunk are allowed to grow for 4 months. In mid-June, a ring of bark is removed from all shoots except one on each plant and lanolin paste containing IBA (2,500 ppm) is applied to the upper portion of the ringed area. Ten days later, earth is heaped up to cover 4 to 6 in (10-15 cm) of the stem above the ring. This causes the shoots to root profusely in 2 months. The rooted shoots are separated from the plant and are immediately planted in nursery beds or pots. Those which do not wilt in 3 weeks are judged suitable for setting out in the field. The earth around the parent plants is leveled and the process of fertilization, cultivation, ringing and earthing-up and harvesting of stools is repeated over and over for years until the parent plants have lost their vitality. It is reported that the transplanted shoots have a survival rate of 81-82% as compared with 40% to 50% in air-layers.

Just pretend it is in quotes. It is easier to read when it is not.

nice post Pip. So what do you do with a leeche nut? Never tasted one. I'm glad you posted what you have because I think I will have better luck with air layering.