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pluto54

grafting onto Black Cherry

16 years ago

Anyone with success grafting sweet cherries or other stone fruit onto Black Cherry?

Comments (10)

  • 16 years ago

    I've been waiting to see if you get any better-informed responses to your question, and since none have come up I'll venture an opinion.

    Stone fruits in general are relatively amenable to such grafts as you suggest and it's worth a try. But even if the graft takes it may not thrive on a given rootstock, or may suffer delayed rejection. It may be stunted or it may overgrow its host.

    I have an Italian prune I grafted to prunus tomentosa (Nankind cherry) a couple of years ago and while it appears to be living it sure hasn't grown much! Remains to be seen whether it is permanently stunted or just being sluggish.

    Good luck,

    M

  • 16 years ago

    I have tried grafting sweet cherry to a couple of wild black cherries twice without success. Once a couple appeared to take and grow some, but died by mid summer. I don't know if they're incompatible or if I just had bad luck, but sweet cherries are more fussy than other Prunus species it seems. I've got some grafts of European plums and Japanese plums on wild plum, but the only sweet cherries I've grafted successfully were on cherry rootstock.

  • 16 years ago

    I think a member (Konrad)from Canada has some sweet cherries grafted to wild pin cherries. Maybe he will report on how they are doing. We have a dwarf form of black cherry, pin cherry and choke cherry. Not sure if pie cherries will graft to any of them either.
    Bberry

  • 16 years ago

    Just for fun, I tried grafting a couple Early Richmond cherries onto chokecherries a couple years ago. Conditions weren't the best, I did it at the last minute, the chokecherries had leaves partially emerged and the pie cherries had very swollen buds almost ready to break the leaves out. Both grafts seemed to take, the leaves came on out and they started to grow, however in about a month, one of the grafts wilted and dried up, then a month later the other one did. The next spring I unwrapped the graft and found the chokecherry had grown nicely around the dead graft. Don't know if they were incompatible or not, but the pie cherries lived long enough I figured the graft was good but they may be incompatible and failed shortly after as a result. At least a scion not attached to any source of moisture will just dry up and die, and these lived long enough they had to be getting something from the chokecherry.

  • 16 years ago

    I had a similar problem, Beeone, on my apple this year. I was sure grafts had taken, but later they withered.

    I was suspicious of a couple of the scions -on the verge of breaking out, as were some of yours- and I wonder if their activity inhibited a good bond. I just don't know. I am sure that I'll return any scions I get if they are not fully dormant.

    Not sure if it matters, or if it does matter, to what degree.

    M

  • 16 years ago

    Wondered if the non-dormant scions outgrew the healing of the graft, then they died from lack of moisture/nutrition across the graft. May try again if I cut some cherries. My thought with this experience was to see if the pie cherries would be compatible, then maybe try grafting a sweet cherry to a chokecherry root at some point to have an extremely hardy rootstock for the cherries.

    One thing I really noticed when doing the graft to chokecherry was that when grafting to small branches, they tend to be somewhat hollow/pithy in the center, almost like a reed, so whip and tongue grafting can be kind of tricky--the branch just doesn't hold up well to carving.

  • 16 years ago

    How about a cleft graft on the black cherry?

  • 16 years ago

    I have a gut feeling that it's not going to work,.. but you'll never know until you try.
    I have experimented with choke cherry, it took but after about 3 month the graft died.
    I'm always looking for hardy root stock to see if sweet cherries can be grown here and yes, grafted to
    pincherry seems to be working, also top grafted on Evans cherry, fruit can be expected ones in a while
    when winter temperatures don't go beyond minus 35 C or -31F...I kind of expect it every 6 years or so
    on average, ....just like our Apricots.
    Have you ever seen wild sweet cherry tree seedlings in ditches or on edge of woods [from bird droppings] ??
    ...I did, in the old country and some of them are really good, perhaps a little smaller but who cares, ..as a kid, we still loved these cherries.
    My thinking is this,....some of these wild ones might just fit the bill to grow up here in the north.
    I sure would love to test some of these! So far, we really can't grow any sweet cherries here.
    In Alaska, Amur cherry [Prunus maackii] is used allot, I'm still testing this here too but it seems pin cherry does
    better for me. Allot of places in Alaska doesn't get as cold then here, especially when close to the Ocean.

    Konrad

  • 15 years ago

    In Minnesota--a hobbiest has budded sweet cherry's on Prunis Maacki, and has success in them growing

  • 7 years ago

    I have grafted Bing and Lapin on to my Black Tartarian Sweet Cherry tree. Plan to graft Rainier, plucots and Apriums on to it in the spring. I will keep you posted.