North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Title: Re: [NAFEX] T-budding Mulberry and Bleeding

I don't know if it's the same on mulberries, but on grapes and nut trees, you can graft dorman scions on green shoots (or green scions on green shoots) and there is no bleeding, plus the grafts heal very fast.  I have had good enough luck  with it that I wrote up the technique for grapes in my book.  Clive Simms wrote an article on green grafting of walnuts for POMONA a few years back.  
> -Lon Rombough
Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com

From: Lucky Pittman

> 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