North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

At 07:02 AM 7/9/2003 -0500, Donna  wrote:
> This made me sit up and take notice.  I grafted mulberries this spring for
> the first time, and got good results at first, with takes on 8 grafts.  Then
> hail knocked off a couple of buds but the grafts still held, and then they
> all proceeded to die off, some within weeeks, others taking a couple of
> months.  I think they are all dead now.  And no, my local stocks are not
> paper mulberry.  Anybody have experience with mulberries?
>     Actually, my initial failure sounds like Melanie's problem.  Most of my
> grafts went on small twigs or branches about 1/2" diameter, but the largest
> tree was about 2" in diameter.  It wept a lot of white sap all over the
> stump, and the two grafts on that one never showed any signs of life.  Donna

I have occasional grafts/buds that seem to flood out - on various species - 
mulberry, pecan, hickory, walnut, persimmon.  Haven't yet figured out 
what's going on - other grafts/buds done the same day will do just fine.

I'm planning to get out and bud a few mulberries in the next few days, 
using several different techniques, just to see if any seem to work better 
than others.

Wonder if an inverted T-bud placement would be less likely to flood out?

Might even try that 'sap-stopper' technique, a modified bark graft, where 
instead of completely beheading the rootstock, you just cut 3/4 to 7/8 of 
the way through the stock, break it over, then do a simple bark graft.  The 
still-connected portion of the rootstock acts as a 'sap-drawer' or 'relief 
valve'.  I've had better success with this technique on walnuts than with 
anything else I've tried.

I've done simple whips, whip & tongue, T-bud, bark grafts, cleft grafts on 
mulberries, all with reasonable success rates, but I from the small numbers 
I've done, cleft grafts have seemed to have the greatest success rate.  All 
these, with the exception of T-budding, were done with dormant-collected 
scions and actively growing rootstocks.

Lucky Pittman
USDA Zone 6
Hopkinsville, KY