Anyone shield/t budding yet?

[Llamas]

I'm still oh so very new to the exciting world of grafting and budding, but of late I've been going around ruthlessly poking and prodding all my fruit trees to see if their bark have started to slip yet. I know its early days yet but I couldn't resist after finding that my brown turkey fig seems to have reached that easy-peel stage and I went and grafted a few brunswick buds onto it. Looking forward to doing the same with my Denniston's Superb gage onto my Ruby Mirabelle plum (polliation, finally. I've only got one plum on the mirabelle this year because of poor pollination) Anyone else budding or eagerly awaiting the time when they can?

[FB.]

I wouldn't bother with grafting figs, unless you are limited in space and want a "family tree" with each branch being a different variety.
Figs can be grown reasonably well from hardwood cuttings, taken in late autumn. They can be slow to get going though.

If you have young fruit tree wood which has sufficiently matured (i.e. more like a pale brown twig than a green shoot) then you can use it for bud grafting.
However, only the base of shoots are likely to be hardened-off/matured at the moment, so you'll end up with quite a lot of wastage from the greenish middle and green tips of shoots. The mother tree will be somewhat de-vigorated if you take too many complete shoots.

I would be cautious of grafting too many shoots of different varities onto one plant, as you may end up spreading virus or fungal disease from one plant to another.
For example: many mature fruit trees become infected by viruses (aphids and nematodes carry them from one tree to another) and some varieties show no symptoms of certain viruses, but when a piece is grafted onto another tree, the other tree can go into sudden and severe decline.

For example: I have some small apple rootstock beds.
They are basically like coppiced hazels. I hack them down each winter and the shoots which grow up can be separated from the mother plant and used as rootstock.

If I grafted the rootstocks while still attached to the mother plants, any viruses in the scion would get into the mother's sap via the graft and spread through the whole rootstock bed.

Considering the number of old, rare, probably virus-ridden varieties which I grow, I could soon end up with my rootstock carrying dozens of viruses. At the very least it would reduce vigour (*) and at most it could kill the rootstock since certain varieties carry but do not suffer from certain viruses.

(*)
The old M-series rootstocks (M1 through M16) dating from the early 1900's carried many viruses.
A few decades ago, the East Malling and Long Ashton research stations set about getting them "virus-free" by changing the temperature of growth to one where the plant can grow but the virus is unable to multiply inside the plant cells. Therefore the younger plant shoots can later be used as virus-free material and the EMLA (EastMallingLongAshton) series of rootstocks came into existence.
It was found that these virus-clean rootstocks were considerably more vigorous than the virus-infected originals. Or should that be: the virus-infected original rootstocks were considerably de-vigorated by the viruses they carried.
I expect that most old varieties of fruit are heavily infected with multiple viruses after being grown for hundreds of years. But the old forgotten varieties are of no interest to commercial growers, so nobody has bothered to clean them up.

On te other hand, though, I have seen claims that the virus-clean rootstocks, due to their extra vigour, may not be as fruitful, nor produce such good quality fruit as their "dirty" counterparts.

[FB.]

I would say, though, that I prefer grafting while dormant.
Whip and tongue or cleft graft take best because the scion is "nipped" tightly between the split sides of the rootstock, which encourages the graft to join.
Grafting while dormant in late winter/early spring seems to reduce the chance of drying-out, which is a problem as the weather gets hotter and as everywhere dries-out in summer.

It is also important to use scion wood from vigorous and healthy shoots.
Graftwood from weak-growing shoots, or from diseased mother trees often fails to "take" - I have seen scions from cankered old trees transfer canker to the tree or rootstock onto which they are grafted. I tried to graft from someone's somewhat-cankered and in-decline Howgate Wonder but the grafts all failed; they passed canker to the rootstocks and both the rootstock and scion died from systemic canker.
Same with the rootstock; if the rootstock hasn't been growing well, it will take too long to heal the graft wound and the scion will dry out before sapflow is established.

So the moral is: use only vigorous and healthy material for grafting and be careful not to spread fungal, viral or phytoplasma diseases by grafting everything to everything.

[Llamas]

Whew! Well, thank you very much FB, as ever you've provided lots of wonderfuly informed and detailed information to digest. Where do you get all this info on rootstocks and history from? I seem to be just scratching the surface of information available, and what you've mentioned is facinating.

I read not to bud too early, and you always hear about diseases but they don't always say why - now I know a little more about just why not to do some things and diseases. I will not go grafting mad and try to make plum and fig frankenstiens. Promise :P

re: the fig - A family tree is exactly what I'm after. I'd like to be able to plant the tree near the house on our farm. I love fruit trees and will likely want to have a number near by, growing on the walls of the house, making space a little bit of a premium. I've taken cuttings of our largest fig and have five plants growing away currently. You're right, they are a little slow to get going but they seem to be doing better and better as time goes on.

Would be great while I have you if you could answer a question someone asked me : Why can't you bud using last years growth? Why does it have to be this years?

[Llamas]

Also, as you mentioned you grow rare varieties, do you have any thoughts on Doddin apples? And would you choose between Egremont Russet, St. Edmunds Pippin and Norfolk Royal Russet or grow them all?

Sorry for all the questions

[FB.]

I would no longer recommend Egremont Russet.
Its disease resistance - at least in my area - seems to have been defeated by new strains of scab and canker which are probably evolving to attack a variety which is becoming very popular.
I recently lost an Egremont Russet to a fatal attack of canker, and my other ER is now suffering from some scab on the fruits for the first time ever.
My Egremonts also have shown tendency to become very biennial unless thinned - no fruit one season and a large crop of golfball-sized fruits the next.
I must admit, though, that bitter pit hasn't been anywhere as bad as I would expect, from a variety which is supposedly very prone to it; very little, in fact. There are plenty of other apples not noted for bitter pit which suffer much worse than Egremont Russet.

I'd be tempted to give the others a try though, as they are not nearly as common.
Less common generally means less chance of diseases adapting to attack them; diseases prefer to evolve to attack the widely-planted varieties, so that the disease doesn't have to use different ways to get around a plants resistance: it becomes a master of one attack method. Once one Cox, Bramley or Egremont has been defeated, the same strain can defeat all the other trees of that type and can spread rapidly - but will not generally attack varieties for which it is not adapted, and this adaptation takes some years and many trees of one variety for the disease to perfect the bypassing of the plants defences.

[FB.]

Why can't you bud using last years growth? Why does it have to be this years?

I've generally found that young growth or the previous season's growth will "take".
Probably older growth would, too.

So I'm not sure why.
In my experience, we place too much emphasis on following some expert's guidance to the letter - such as: "so-and-so expert said thou shalt not do it this way", when, in fact, other ways can work, and, in certain conditions, can work better.
So go for it. Graft some older buds if you want and learn from it - but also graft some fresh buds just in case the older buds fail for some reason.

Perhaps the old growth is more fiddly; not having a leaf stem to use as a "handle".
Perhaps also the old growth tends to be in deeper dormancy.
Maybe younger growth is less likely to be infected with diseases such as canker.
And also young growth may be more vigorous, so may heal the wound faster.