North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[DocKW@aol.com]

I've had some small success with grafting chestnut. 

The key , I believe ,is to graft to seedlings that are closely related to the cultivar you are grafting...so you minimize graft incompatibility.   I had seedlings of known cultivars planted in pots in the greenhouse where I grafted dormant buds.  The heat pushed the rootstock and the callusing was fast and the scions took at a very high rate of success.  We've done this mostly with local American stock trying to reclaim genetic stock from the wild. 

'As an example of what does not work is my Dunstan hybrids that came from the nursery budded on Chinese seedling stock.  I 've had terrible survival with these even with planting in the greenhouse and babying them then later planting them in the orchard.  I have a Revival that just died for no reason (apparent) that was nut bearing.  This was the 5th copy from the nursery and the only way I'd try it again would be to get a cutting and bud it to one of my other Dunstan seedlings  ....please note, I'm not propagating these for other than keeping a single copy survivor in my orchard...as I believe they are protected by copyright.

In essence, American seedling rootstock for American scions, Chinese seedling rootstock for Chinese scions and for my Dunstan Hybrids, I'd use Dunstan seedlings....

Then don't forget the heat, which I believe is crucial to success.

Hope this helps.

Karl Olson

Zone 6 SW Connecticut