Hi Keith,

'Baker Street Broom' is alive and well. I've attached a picture of the 6-year-old plant. It's now about 5 feet (1.5 m) tall and clearly not a dwarf (unfortunately).

I think it's had it's last year of growing "free range." This year I intend to start bending shaping and pruning it hard as there's not room for a large tree where I have it.

sc77 thanks for your reply. I looked when I got home from work and understock is pushing new growth.

March is typically fine for grafting in IA in my experience but I have used basement and lights not greenhouse. Typically in ground plants dont push new growth till April. An early warm up this year spoiled my plans. I will post some pictures later about what I am seeing with the understock and scion

Dave, thanks a bunch. Must say I am mightily disappointed in the habit of that tree and in my mind it is now Baker Street Bust

keith

If it was anyone else I would have said the graft died and the rootstock took over!

whaas -- that made me laugh

I left my copy of the BSB at old place when I moved 3 years ago. Glad I did.

If all my grafts take (9) I will have more than doubled my current collection... My how times change

Images from today:

scion parviflora

Grafted on 3/20. I am hopeful that they won't all croak but expecting they will.

I had quick scion push (first week) with a successful taxodium graft once but never pinus.

keith

It will be interesting. This year I grafted on Jan 29th and my first graft to push was Pinus strobus on Feb 21st... That was the fastest I have seen. I think they pushed faster, because I waited an extra 2 weeks for the understock to be actively pushing, not just bud swell or white tips on roots. So, I knew when I grafted the understock was in full growth mode. Scions were obviously deeply dormant at that time of year, so ~3 weeks to see the Scion pushing was a surprise. For comparison, some of the spruce still haven't pushed or just started to.

Nice to see some grafting going on around here again! Since you are doing basement grafting you won't have to battle the sun heating up your chamber... Nice way to extend the grafting season! Good luck

Shawn