Chip budding... that is all i use. I do it in July/Aug around here...

The cambium seems as clear as apples to me, I'm not sure whats not adding up for you. I almost wonder if you are getting the outer skin mixed up with the cambium? There is a hard shell that is paper thin on top of the bark and the cambium is in from that.

Note you need to graft stone fruits when they have some growth on them and the temps for the next few days need to be highs in the 70s or 80s. Its been in the zone the last few days so I did a bunch of grafts. They are not as easy as apples but with practice its not so bad. I prefer grafting to chip budding, I lose too many chip buds over the winter.

Scott

Thanks for the advice I may try chip budding this year as well. Scott I'm using western sand cherry and so far they have been tough there is not a lot on the scion and it's hard to line up with the rootstock. I see outer bark on the scion and no green. It may be the scion variety I'm using. These are Japanese hybrid plums. I will let you know how it turns out. Apples and pears are so clear and some of my scions on them already show leaves coming out.

I'm jealous! We haven't even broken dormancy yet. I usually graft pomes the last week of April on, but it looks like we might be a little late this year.

I bench grafted plum with ease a few years ago, but have had very poor results with summer grafting stone fruits. My very limited successes were either chip or bud.

Sometimes the weather just doesn't cooperate here.

Marknmt I am nearly half done grafting and planting for the year so I'm surprised your region is still dormant. The great news on my stone fruit grafting problems was only a few sticks of scion wood were the hard ones. The other 8 varities of plums I have done have been easier. I guess you have to start with the hardest. The test rootstock I'm using now are American plum, sand plum, goose plums, Canadian bounty plums, myrobalan plum. I'm testing a whole row of prunus bessyi. I'm searching for the best rootstock for my area. People don't typically do well growing plums here so I am doing a variety of test crops before I do a larger planting. Some of the rootstock have very papery outer bark and others the bark has been stringy and tough. I will try to keep good notes and with a little luck I should find a good variety for a larger planting :0)

scottfsmith thanks I'm glad it was variety of scion related. I'm doing tests with Alderman, Toka, Superior, Kahinta, Waneta, and Gracious with that batch. Whatever was the first one of those I grabbed was the one you could not see to line up. I did the best I could with that variety and moved on. I'm kind of hoping they don't take so I don't go through that again. The others have been straight forward.

This post was edited by ClarkinKS on Wed, Apr 16, 14 at 5:43

So the grafts are done on the stone fruits and now we wait. This is the first one I did and it's already budding. I painted the trunk so they would not get sunburned.

I bought around 20 fruit trees last year and most did fine, but I had a few that the root stock lived but the graft did not. The company replaced the trees and now in looking at the root stock it is healthy and growing. The trees were all grafted peach trees but the root stock is very purple and looks more like plum. Is this normal? What would you do, graft something new onto it? Is it likely to be a decent plum if I let it grow? To late for this year here. Need advice. Space is not an issue.

If the stock does look different from all the others it may well be rootstock and you can graft it with a non patented variety of peach. The rootstock will not produce good fruit.

This post was edited by ClarkinKS on Mon, May 19, 14 at 5:50