North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Martha Davis <martha_davis@earthlink.net>]

Re: Tips for starting a scionwood exchange.

People who might be interested: master gardeners, cider makers there is a
Colorado group, Nafex members in the area, California rare fruits growers
in the area.

It is always useful to have more scionwood than will actually be used. That
means there is more variety choice and people can choose diameters that
will fit their grafting understock.

It is not a good thing for the first time around, but you might want to
find out for the future if people wold be interested in a group order of
rootstocks or parafilm tape.

Timing depends a bit on what you are grafting. That means what species and
is it bare root rootstock or an existing tree. If you are grafting onto
existing trees (top working) the timing is when those trees are starting to
push buds or a bit before.  Collection of scionwood should be substantially
earlier than that.  People will need instruction on how to collect, how to
label, and how to store the scionwood.

Many groups ask that scionwood be taken from trees that have already
fruited to minimize passing on mislabeled wood.

Useful resources to have on hand are the Fruit and Nut Inventory book from
Seed Savers exchange to look up variety descriptions.  I find having
Parafilm tape very useful in improving my grafting success in Dry high
elevation New Mexico.

Martha Davis





> Hi all,
> I'm hoping to organize a scion exchange in Denver this winter. Does anyone
> have any tips or suggestions to help make it a success?
> Some question I can think of are:
> What is the bed time to hold it?
> How do you find people that would be interested?
> Should I arrange for extra scion wood to be available?
> Besides a grafting demo/workshop are there any other activities to have?
> And probably lots more...
>
> Thanks!
>
> Andy
>
>