North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[alexis@conev.org]

Hey folks,
thanks for the information on persimmons. That's helpful.
I have a question about grafting techniques and what other people have 
found successful.

I learned how to graft some years ago in Tom Burford's class. He is a 
very generous and helpful person. I wanted to graft a lot more than 
apples. (Apples are a crummy crop for the southeast in my opinion.) I 
killed a lot of trees trying to expand my skills. The turning point came 
from a day-long lesson given by Neal Peterson of pawpaw fame.  Another 
very, very generous man. (I know Neal personally. He does not teach 
classes to my knowledge.) After Neal's lesson, my grafting success 
improved enormously. I also have gotten grafting lessons from Clarence 
Willis (not well known, an older gentleman who runs a commercial pecan 
orchard in VA.) I have also studied a lot of books, pamphlets, and 
youtube videos.

I have developed a set of techniques that consistently yields very high 
takes with every tree, and that is grafting everything in the spring. 
For early growing trees, I graft in April (pears, apples, peaches, 
plums). For later growing trees, usually in May (persimmons, pawpaws, 
jujubes, pecans). At this point, if the rootstock is good, I always get 
well over 90% takes. I prefer saddle grafts if I have the time. If I am 
rushed, I use other, simpler cuts.

I have done quite a bit of budding, but it seems like the success rate 
for grafting in the spring using cleft, saddle, whip and tonge, or bark 
gafts is better, with much more consistent and positive results. Seems 
like budding leads to more weak takes, buds that heal but don't grow.

My question is as follows. Given that my methods work better, why does 
budding seem to be the industry standard? Budding is certainly much 
faster than saddle grafting. And I know commercial nurseries can 
compress the time needed to produce a sell-able tree by using 
greenhouses and fall budding. But I am still puzzled why budding is so 
popular when it just doesn't seem to work as well. Part of the reason I 
am asking is that I teach propagation classes now. I teach people based 
on my experience, but other experience are always instructive.
Any thoughts welcome.
Alexis