Hi everyone, I wrote about a month ago asking how to perform T-budding on citrus and got a lot of responses, thanks. I did my budding exactly 5 weeks ago, I budded 3 kaffir lime buds onto a trifoliate orange and 3 onto a rough lemon. After this time 3 took, well at least it looks like it. My big question is how do they look? I read in some links on budding that after about 3-4 weeks the bud should have started growing, mine aren't. I bent the rough lemon over to force them to grow about a week ago and still nothing has happened. On the trifoliate orange I made a small notch with a blade about 1 inch above the buds, still nothing. What do you think? will they grow? Thanks again.
Your buds look good. Congratulations on your success on your first try. I think you may have misunderstood the timeline for T-budding-- in 3 to 4 weeks if the bud is still green you probably have a successful graft and if it is a spring budding you can begin to force the bud--it can take any time from weeks to years for the bud to break and begin growing depending on circumstances. There are at least 3 ways to try and force the bud-- 1 bend the top of the tree or limb down to remove the dominance of the growing tip; 2 cut the tree or limb off a couple inches past the bud; 3 break the tree or limb a few inches past the bud-- be careful as this may cause the limb to split sosome people use a tie-wrap between the bud and the point where they want to break the tree or limb. On a small tree, cutting the top off will usually force the bud within a few weeks, but on a limb where you are adding a variety to a larger tree, it can take a year or more. In addition-- there is what is called blind buds-- these buds will never break since there is actually no bud at that particular leaf node-- this usually happens on the first few leaf nodes of each flush of a limb. Skeet
