Good morning, I’m Tom Spellman with David Wilson Nursery. It’s a beautiful morning in early February here in the Central Valley. I met one of the nurseries test blocks this morning; a lot of different varieties in this row.
One of them is this tree right here. It’s Goldmine Nectarine. Goldmines never really have been one of my favorite varieties. It has some problems that the fruit doesn’t always ripen up real well. Quality is questionable from year to year, so this is a perfect example of what we can do with top-working. We’re going to take this tree which is one Goldmine N Nectarine and we’re going to graft three other varieties under this tree to make it a triple grafted combination.
It’s a good idea to clean your tools with a little alcohol before you get started just so you’re not spreading any viruses or diseases. First thing I’m going to do is prepped the tree. We’re going to take most of the growth off it but leave a “nurse branch.”
On this “nurse branch,” I’m going to take most of the growth off. I’m just going to leave enough on to keep that system of the tree active, to keep the nutrients flowing through the cyst so that when it breaks dormancy it has something to start to push from.
Okay, I’ve got the tree all prepped, cut your nice and smooth and clean. I’ve got my knife all sharpened up. I’m going to wipe it down with a little bit of rubbing alcohol just to make sure that it’s nice and clean. I’ve got some bud wood cut for three different white nectarines varieties. I’m going to put Snow Queen, some Arctic Star, and some Arctic Jay. So we’re going to convert this over into a successive ripening combination; all three varieties are just delicious.
The procedure that we’re going to use today is called the bark graft. And what we’re going to do is make an incision just through the bark about an inch and a half or two inches long. Pull out a flap in the bark and then make a single back cut on our scion stick and insert that down into the flap.
With the bark graft, you can graft into any size wood that you want so I can use a small 3/8 or 1/4-inch scion and I can graft that into a 3-inch or 6-inch or whatever caliper wood that I want to go into.
It’s really important to use one good pole, make a nice smooth single cut, you’re not carving a toy boat. You don’t want to wheedle on this wood.
We put three different grafts or three grafts on this one branch, that way if something doesn’t take, we’ve got plenty of backup. With this bark cut, I’m actually just laying my knife in through the bark and then giving a little bit of a twist so that I can pull that bark out, so that flap moves. So I’m just creating a small pocket that I can slide this scion down into.
There are my three grafts. Now, we’re going to make sure we secure the grafts in the place. I’m going to use with these green one inch nursery tie tape. You can use rubber bands. You can use budding strips and you can use budding tape. I really like this nursery tie tape, it’s cheap, you can buy it at any local retail nursery and it’s real easy to use. I can pull off the pieces as long as I want.
We’re just going to start here at the top. I’m going to come over the side and wrap this nice and tight and work our way down along the cuts so that we have everything covered.
I’ve got some asphalt tree seal here, and what we are going to do is we’re going to seal up any portion of exposed cut that includes both the scion and also the rootstock that we budded into. I’m going to put a fair amount on this rootstock; make sure that I get behind each one of my grafts to seal up the little slice that’s exposed on those. And you don’t want any water to be able to get down behind those, so you want to make sure you push a little bit in behind them. I’m going to seal the top cuts on my scions that prevents any dehydration. It prevents the water and the nutrients from being able to leave that system; keeps it nice and viable until the buds grow out.
Next thing I’m going to do is use one of these little aluminum strip labels and mark the variety. It’s Snow Queen Nectarine, today’s date 02/03/09. I’m just going to loosely tie this around, one of my scions. I don’t want to tie it too tight. I could also tie it into the tape if I wanted. It’s not that really big deal.
And the last thing I’m going to do on this graft is I’m going to bag it, and the reason I’m going to bag it is the weather. The next few days in the Central Valley is going to be very warm. Certainly, unseasonably warm for this time of year. And I don’t want to sunburn these young grafts on here so I’m going to take one of these little lunch bags. I’m going to cut off the four corners so that I have a little bit of air movement through there. I’m just going to slip it down over the graft, not all the way down. I don’t really want to touch the grafts, one tie around it, just to hold it in place. It’s also nice because of these little air vents on here. I can actually look in and see how the grafts are doing. As the grafts begin to swell, the buds begin to swell and they start to grow, I can just go ahead and take that bag off.
I’ve got a little bud wood for Arctic Rose, it’s another mid-season, beautiful white nectarines so I’m going to put that on my nurse branch where I made this cut earlier, and I’m going to turn this into a formula.
Okay, we’re all set. We’ve got our four grafts done. They’re all labeled. They’re all sealed. I’ve got bags on two but I think I’m going to leave the bags off of these other two. On this one; with the nurse branch, I really couldn’t put a bag over it anyway and on this one, it’s a little bit bigger and I don’t think the bag is going to fit very well so I think we’re going to leave these two on their own; just let them grow out.
Take into consideration now the next step. What you need to do is you need to wait. We need to wait until this tree breaks dormancy on its own and starts to grow naturally. You’re going to get some flowering and some foliage out here in this nurse branch right away. You probably are going to get some saccharine from lower portions on this trunk. And the grafts are going to break at the same time. They’re going to flower. They’re going to put out a few little leaves. You don’t want to touch it. You want to leave it alone, probably for at least three weeks; maybe four weeks until you get some growth coming out. At that point, you’re going to come in and reduce everything on this trunk on all three of these trunks and this lower trunk here. And you’re going to leave this nurse branch alone.
You can actually reduce it a little bit but you’re going to leave some growth on here. As the scions begin to grow and prosper, you get maybe twelve, eighteen inches worth of growth out here. Maybe it’s been on two months; two and a half months. At that point you can probably come in and either reduce this nurse branch again drastically or remove it all together.
Once you know, you have well healed and growing scions, they’ll be fine on their own, and they’ll be drawing enough nutrients to keep the system of the tree active themselves.
As the scions are growing out, maybe about mid-summer, you want to make your decision as to what you’re going to keep. You don’t necessary need to keep all three; although they’re balanced; the structures going to work out fine, so I could keep all three but I’m going to open up the center a little bit. I’m going to take out some of this growth that’s growing inward. I’m going to encourage the outward growing buds to form my new canopy.
One more thing everybody should take into consideration; three out of the four varieties that I worked on to this tree today are patented varieties, and we at Dave Wilson Nursery actually are licensed to grow all three of those patented varieties. That’s Arctic Star, Arctic Rose and Arctic Jay. The Snow Queen, the first variety that I put on is an old-fashioned variety. It’s been around a long time. It’s a delicious white nectarine. It’s not a patented variety so it’s open for propagation.
These other three are actually varieties that can only be propagated by a licensed grower. So, I really encourage you to take into consideration when selecting your scion wood, look for varieties that are non-patents. You don’t want to reproduce or replicate patented varieties. That is actually illegal to do.
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