I've never found it necessary to protect the scion from drying. Unless it
is in poor shape (for example, started to break dormancy in storage). Of
course, WI has pretty reliably high relative humidity in the spring.
Watering the rootstock before grafting, and making sure it has adequate
water thru the growing season, has been more help to my grafting (sandier
soils.)
tc, s.WI
----Original Message Follows----
From: Tom Olenio <tolenio@sentex.net>
Reply-To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: *****SPAM***** Re: [NAFEX] Grafting-where did I go wrong
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 10:08:26 -0500
Hello,
In a grafting workshop I took at the University of Guelph, held by Professor
Henry Kock,
Interpretive Horticulturist, he indicated the key was sealing moisture into
the scion while the
graft healed.
He has used Wilson pruning paint for hundreds of thousands of grafts of
various trees and shrubs.
The advantage of the pruning paint is that the buds will grow through it,
when they are ready too
and the pruning paint will not move around much (get under the rubber).
You paint over the grafting rubber, and the entire scion. This seals
moisture in. In a year or
two after the graft is made, you will no longer see any evidence of the
pruning paint.
He does NOT recommend using pruning paint for pruning cuts.
I have used his technique to great success. I was given an can of old
grafting wax recently and
this season will try using it to seal the union and scion. Not sure if the
heat of the warm wax
will injure the buds or not.