onetwothreetim: I've given up on live rootstock. Gurneys burnt me so many times that I lost all faith. Once I ordered a walnut tree and it came with the roots exposed in air and the branches wrapped with sphagnum moss! Me, too, unless I'm desperate. Just isn't worth it. Pay more and get better first or start your own and wait longer. Good luck with your seeds. I'm getting hooked on starting outside in containers....I started my Bee Balm a few weeks ago and I'm having much better luck than planting it in situ. Thanks, I've got 17 containers and assorted ready to plant ASAP. It's a late start, but I've been successful with perennials in prior years that way, as long as you get them in the ground about 2 months B4 hard freeze. One year I stuck 5 1 gal nursery containers of coreopsis in the ground just before a hard freeze. They survived, only have two left but one has spread so much I will need to divide it. 25-cent pkt of seeds. So you never know. I figure even though the tops froze off right away, the roots were still protected, wouldn't work for some things. It was either that or overwinter in sunroom, and I didn't want 5 more things to pamper thru winter. The WS forum has been very inspiring. Here is a tip someone gave me here last year when I wanted to start some gypsophilia (the florist kind) in situ. Scoop out a cavity, fill with potting soil, plant your seeds, put a 2 liter soda bottle over it with cap off. Water when there's no moisture in the bottle. It worked great, but the gypsophilia wasn't happy, have two dinky ones left, never bloomed. Already tried chalk at someone's suggestion, crushed up drywall. It's a gamble when it gets too hot. Gotta post this, daughter here.

You can grow cherries in the valley. Minnie Royal and Royal Lee require 100 and less than 300 chill hours respectively (local nurseries or Bay Laurel). Cristobalina requires 200 chills (Arboreum). All may be somewhat self fertile but greater productivity with a cross fertilizer. Experience in the valley is still quite limited but reports are only around 50 cherries per (small) trees in Phoenix. Avoid it on the commonly found Mazzard rootstock as it seems to be sensitive to Cotton Root Rot. Buy it on Colt or the new Newroot-1 (dwarfing) rootstock. You will need to provide overhead protection starting around mid-May from the sun in the summer or the leaves sunburn badly. Think understory to a primary shade tree that provides dappled light or build a pergola. Cherries are more shallow rooted than other Prunus species so they need more frequent waterings and a good thick wood chip mulch.

Nope. Any particular reason you might want to do this? I did however, used my own modified T-Bud grafting method, onto regular cacaria rootstock, and it took. This year, I tried a whip and tongue, and I got 100% failure rate. Then I switched over th T-Bud using the book method and got a 3 out of 5 failure rate. So I decided to do the T-Bud method differently, and got close to 100% take rate after that. Now, I feel pretty confident that I got this down, and am addicted to grafting. I have a good sized Improved Brown Turkey tree that just wasn't ripening, and tastes terrible. I grafted Desert King, Peter's Honey, Grosse Monstrueus, LSU Gold, and St. Anthonys onto it. It's been a month now, and it looks like the buds are starting to push, and are still a healthy green. I also have a Conadria Fig which yields okay figs, but during last year I only could ripen 2 out of several dozen figs on the tree. So this year, I grafted over it with Native de Argentile, LSU Purple, Violette De Bordeux, Col de Dame, and UCD 187-25. The graft looks good and healthy. I will try to put a demo online one day. But for now, I'm going to see what happens first before I actually post in order to verify that it works well. So lets see what happens later. Jonathan in San Francisco

fruitnut Z7 4500ft SW TX, thank you very much for the advice, it's really appreciated. Now I know in what direction to move. And yes, there is one unneeded rootstock 4 feet away left after one apricot grafted on it died. I just didn't unroot the stock right away, wanted to see what are its fruits like, didn't realize it could hinder the pecan when I was planting the pecan nearby. Back then, I planned to unroot the rootstock in the future anyway because it's very thorny and, since is used as a rootstock, it isn't likely to bear quality fruits. And who knows how many more years it will take until it starts to bear? Afterwards, there will be only about 9 feet of space to a peach tree, 13 feet to a weeping willow, and 11.5 feet to a plum. By the way, is it true that if there is only one pecan tree in a large area, it will not set fruits? Are there some places in Texas where you didn't see fruits on any pecan tree just because it was growing alone? I know also that zone 5b is a bit cold for pecans and they might stay without fruits for that reason. When do they bloom and when the nuts ripen in Texas (how many weeks do they need after blooming)?