Hello all, I am just curious when is the best time to graft, i have never done it, would like to try. I contacted a couple of vendors recently and they all tell me they are very busy grafting JM, so I ask: are they grafting them for next years sales or they expect to sell them soon? the grafted JM that I bought a month ago, would they have been grafted this year or from last year. Also anyone has any ideas about the success rate of grafting JM (no need to be specific on which kind, i am aware some are easier to graft than others). How soon after you graft do you expect to see new growth? Disclaimer: I am just a curious hobbyist, I am not a grower or a nursery and am not trying to steal trade secrets, before anyone gets too excited and writes a thesis about how people want to get information and have nothing to offer. I am new to this, so you really don't want my knowledge.. lol.. I teach dance and coach soccer, I can gladly help with that....
Walid, I do not know about the timetable, but this was a nice link about grafting that I came across. http://webpages.charter.net/wbshell/garden/graftmaple.htm xman
Grafting is no big deal. As has been stated in this forum it can be done probably nine months out of the year in a place like Oregon. The longer the growing season the longer the opportunity. Dormant grafts take the longest to push buds. The people you talk to now can see bud swell and even leaf emergence in a couple of weeks, but that does not mean the graft has fully healed. Troublesome grafts can take as long as 6 weeks to push buds, so if you graft now and don't have leaves for nearly 6 weeks you also need to allow for time for secondary buds to form and new growth to harden off. For this area, southern Oregon we usually see dormancy by the end of November if I am not mistaken and most pleople finsh up grafting in September, so that totals about 3 months from start to finish. If you use a greenhouse or the like it is not as critical. The key is that you need to have a dormant set of buds on the scion. So, you can obviously do this when the parent tree is dormant (winter grafting) or during the growing season when you have a secondary bud pair present. Sometimes, like now, you can see buds pushing up behind the existing petioles which clearly shows the dormant bud. The other way to tell is to remove the leaf and petiole by pulling it off the proposed scion and look to see if there is a bud waiting. The bigger the bud the better--this usually will equate to a quicker response time after grafting. Usually a minimum of two nodes on the scion, up to four, is about what you want for the scion. Usually you would use wood from the current year up to a year old, but the more mature the bark on the scion the more difficulty you will have getting the graft to heal. The tutorial that was linked can help you with the rest. It really is pretty easy. It is the refinement that takes time and there are many different types of grafting for maples, but more common being the side-veneer graft.
Yes getting a few to take is not too hard once you figure get the knack of it. My biggest issues are aligning the cambium (not so hard on most varieties but most dwarfs and some other unusual varieties can be a bit tricky), and keeping the scion from drying out. Get those down and you should have at least 50 % success on most varieties. Practice, selection of good matches for understock and scion, and good timing for your area can get you up into the 90 % range.
