[NAFEX] Graftwood - how long will it keep?
Steve
sdw12986 at aol.com
Tue Jul 15 23:56:18 EDT 2008
K Q wrote:
> One September I did some plum budding. After I budded all I wanted, I put the scions back in the frig and promptly forgot them, did some apples at this time too, as I remember.
>
> Come Spring, the plum wood was still fresh and viable, and, get this, NOT coming our of dormancy in the frig, but all my other plum wood from winter trading WAS out of dormancy? Puzzled, I used the September wood again, this time in the spring, and it worked as well as ever.
>
> Later on I ran into somebody elses statements that said if you remove prunus wood from the rootsource before it has had a chance to get its full complement of chill hours (necessary to break dormancy) it will stay dormant much longer. So now I make a practice of trying to take wood in late October or sometime in November. Stays dormant much better. There is something of a nexus between getting chill hours outdoors while being connected to a rootstock that makes things get the required chill hours. Early collected scions receive all kinds of chill hours in the 33 degree frig, but does not come out of dormancy spontaneously!
>
> I am still looking for the explanation of what the rootstock has to do with it ....
>
> Ken Q.
>
I wonder if it has something to do with the constant temperatures of the
refrigerator compared to the fluctuating temperatures outdoors?
Spring of 2007, I mail ordered some scion wood. I had stored it only
about 2 months. When I took it out of the refrigerator to do the
grafting, 2 of the 4 cultivars of pear had started to break dormancy
showing green tips. About half the apricots were doing the same. (All
the apples and plums stayed dormant.) I grafted them all anyway. Every
pear graft grew. The apricots were not nearly so forgiving.
Steve in the Adirondacks
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