Red: I do T budding both early and late. I only do early when I want to force growth soon after budding. I can bud in the greenhouse in early May. The determining factor is when the budwood is mature enough to use. I bud in late summer to be forced the next spring.

By budding in May and forcing two wks later I can often crop that bud next yr. This is for stone fruit.

The Fruitnut

So I can probably start early budding in 2 or 3 weeks? How do you tell if the budwood is mature enough to use?

You need to see next year's dormant bud formed already to use budwood. They usually recommend collecting it in August but I think where we live July is also good. I chip bud from April to August but earlier than July I am using dormant scionwood, not budwood.

Scott

imred, I got some scions in the mail late last summer. I chip budded them on my plum and pears and they healed to the new branch in 2-3 weeks. This spring the grafted buds popped about a week after the host tree.

The procedure I use is to cut the bud off with a sliver of wood. Cut matching size bud off the host tree and wrap with parafilm. I left the parafilm on over the winter because I forgot to label them. The chip bud growth now 8" is greater than the scion grafts I did on the same tree. The buds for next season develop in the leaf crotch in late summer.

Scott:

How do you use scionwood? Just cut out a dormant bud?

Carla in Sac

I T bud in the spring after the scion wood changes color. The bark on the scion wood changes from green to red or brown. In the greenhouse this is sometime in April. Outside about a month later. I've never felt the buds failed due to the scion wood being too immature. But can see that this might happen. I have nearly 100% takes.

Sometimes there can be trouble forcing the bud to grow in spring or early summer. This is more likely to happen when budding onto a small limb on a large tree. You cut off above the bud two wks after budding and the bud just sets there. Buds are easier to force in the spring. That's one reason late summer budding is more common. But I can often get fruit a yr earlier by forcing growth in the spring or early summer.

The Fruitnut

Carla, you do just what you would do with budwood, cut out a chip from the scion and a similar-sized chip from the stock. I mainly do these kinds of grafts as backups in the spring, in case the main graft fails. I was also grafting this spring with some really old budwood from last summer, and I used chip buds on those.

Fruitnut, that color change point sounds like a good marker. I usually pull off a couple leaves and look for a fully-formed next-years bud underneath it (it looks like a dormant bud, by the leaf base).

Scott

the pear "T" bud grafted last summer- when will it start producing some pears on the new grafted branch?

Gee, somewhere from next year to ten years from now :-) It depends on how big the main tree you grafted it to was and the variety of pear.

Scott

Does someone have a tutorial on how to do this? (video?)

I would really like to graft some branches onto some smaller seedling peaches, i'm just not sure when is best. Its been very COLD up here lately and i don't see it hitting 80F until next week...

Frank- no video, but here's a link that shows it pretty clearly.

It's really pretty straightforward. You'll get successes right away, I think, if you follow the steps just as they are shown.

The link shows the use of polyethelene tape. If you don't have any an empty bread bag cut into strips works just as well, as will parafilm if you have that.

Good luck, and I hope spring gets there soon,

Mark

Here is a link that might be useful: chip budding infor

Frank:

Yes, there is an excellent video put out by the University of Oregon on grafting and budding.. I think its about thirty bucks, but worth it. Check Google and their web site.

buyali in Ontario

franktank try this one;
http://blip.tv/file/346153/

I thought the video Radovan linked was quite good. Tried to find one like it for whip and tongue and for cleft grafting but didn't.