Konrad can you help me out with this.
I suck at spring grafts. All are short lived or don't take.

I tried whip grafting some of the Riley apricot onto one of the capilano Trees i got from you last year.
Problem is the Riley cutting seemed much fresher and greener. The capilano was growing like crazy last season got them almost 3/4" thick. But I had no fresh last years growth to graft the Riley scions to. The wood on the capilano was very difficult to work with.

Do I have to graft last years growth onto last years growth?

And how late into spring can I wait. I've got lots in the fridge .
Buds on most of my trees have swelled how much longer can I wait to do grafts?

You're way too early,..grafting starts in about another week or two, you want to see the buds on the rootstock bursting an growing, then the bark is slippery and easy to cut into with "flat" knife, by pushing down, then loosen bark a little with knife by twisting both way as you keep the knife still down on the wood after cutting into. When wood is ready and slippery, the cut will be much cleaner and the scion wood can be easily inserted.

The root stock can be several years old, [I don't like to use heavier then thumb size, will heal together faster] but the scion has to be always last years growth, which means, you need to harvest the wood on the very end of branches.

You'll have lots of time,..about into mid June.
Keep scion wood in a zip lock bag with a moist, [not wet] piece of paper towel in the fridge.

You can still harvest bud wood now if needed, [I did some Saskatoon today]...especially when wrapping with para-film tape after grafting.

Well i did two tonight using this exact style konrad.

Ill wait a few weeks than giver some more. Your technique is pretty slick.

What is the longest scion you can use. Ive got some resl nice 12-16" sticks that were lasts years growth with the thickest point being around 1/4" .
If i cut short i think the thin part will be to thin . Is it ok to graft the full piece or do i need to cutt it?

Normally, only use 2 or 3 buds sticking out when you're done.
That cherry graft in the link I used a couple more because I knew the pin cherry root stock would have allot of energy to push out all the buds. My root stock is mostly larger then scion, so, doing a bark graft, it doesn't matter size differences. If you have same size on both, then a whip and tongue graft would be preferred.

Ill wait few weeks and try again i did not see your response till after i did them.

Right now a few of my trees buds are looking very close to opening is this the time ? Or do i let it flower

Well..this garden corner was a failure, guess everybody had the same problem as me... just couldn't navigate this..log in etc! And ..who wants to join something else when you're here!

Looks like Matt got the hang of it.

alderman plum starting to poke out .grafted to brookred. Took a look yesterday and all the grafts I did 2-3 weeks ago are taking and leafed out. Apricots ,cherries and plums. Did a lot of peach grafting yesterday spent a solid 10 hours grafting redesigning some low production trees into something else that produces here.

Cherry

Hi all,

I did some grafting for the very first time this year (about 2 weeks ago). many thanks Konrad for providing advice and of course beautiful scion sticks!

Plum scion on plum trees:

Plum onto Apricot rootstock.

I think all are pushing leafs out except for one where I did a bad wrapping and the weight of the lunch bag broke it off.

What I learned from this is label your graft!!! I lost track of what I graft quite fast and now I have no idea which are which :( I did all the grafting on my brother-in-law trees and have little time while visiting them. Lesson learned and will need to prepare bunch of labels before grafting.

EDIT: By the way, I live in Calgary's NW Tuscany and the grafting in the picture was done at my brother-in-law's Calgary SE. My 2 plum trees are too young ( 2nd season in the ground) to graft.

Konrad, what do you mean by join something else? Like moving the discussion of gardening off from houzz website? For example to Reddit or some other forum?

It would have been another forum...locally based in Edmonton.

The problem with locally based website is the size of audience. Unless you want to just restrict to localized group then it is ok. Also information will get lost when this locally based website went out of business. Another suggestion, if I may, is why don't you create a facebook group, if you want to limit the size then make it a close group. You can make some users as your admin people. anyway let me know where you moving your discussion of gardening, I will be sure to follow you.