I am fairly new to gardening and new to this website. I grew some avocado trees from seed for my mother for when she moved to Florida. She moved into to a condo without a yard and isn't interested in keeping them indoors. They are about 4 or 5 years old now (not sure what the parent tree is) and I was considering grafting(Hass? -open to suggestion) them myself as a container plant. I have two sunrooms, one facing south, so I think they will do well if I treat them right (also planning on adding growing lights). Up to now they have been treated poorly since I was planning on giving them away and I didn't want them to get too big (e.g. teeny tiny pot and never transplanted or fertilized, etc). I also bought a small lime tree and meyers lemon tree this year and would like to try and graft a regular lemon branch to the meyers lemon tree and key lime branch to the lime tree. I have not had any luck searching the internet for where I can get budwood/scionwood. Is it possible? I would appreciate any assistance.

KB: If you go back onto a poor rootstock you won't gain anything. What graft(s) are you proficient with? I would get budwood now and refridgerate it in zipper bags with a bit of moist paper towel I have seen where John Panzarella did the bark inlay graft on citrus. I tried it with out much success. It is supposed to be like a Pecan graft. If you are in Texas you can get info on that very easy. If it were mine, I would wait until it warmed up (March) and try a wedge-cleft on the shoots like Panzarella shows on his website. You should have pencil sized shoots to graft onto. And they should be striated wood for the cleft. Your success will be many times higher if you perfectly match the diameters of rootstock and scion. Don't do the "match one side" like they show for apples and peaches. If that fails Plan B should be later when they are actively growing, and the bark is slipping. Try an inverted T-bud. Use second from the last flush budwood. I have T-budded onto softer triangular shoots in topworking a tree. T-budding is tricky in that you have to know when to unwrap the new bud, and that varies with the temperature. Also it may be tricky learning when the bark is really slipping. If it does not slip really good the bud will surely fail. Don't even try to graft in that case, just wrap the incision with tape and let it heal about four weeks. Here is my guide for T-bud unwraping. Temp 90+ Deg. F; 14 or 15 days. Temp 80 Deg. F or less; 21 to 25 days. YMMV If you use different days I would like to know. There is a lot more to it. That is what we're for.

The simple answer is yes; but the IML is probably not your best candidate for that; because, as a tree it is relatively weak compared to the rootstock (Cuban Shaddock, if it is Four Winds), and to other citrus varieties. The net effect of what you are proposing will be a Cuban Shaddock rootstock, a Meyer lemon "internode" and the final variety. It could be an interesting experiment; but I have serious doubts about the success or the wisdom of doing it. If your rootstock, below the bud union, is sufficiently tall, you might try budding or grafting directly to the rootstock.

An effective way of controlling aphids is to spray the tree with a fairly strong stream of water. It will knock many of the aphids off, breaking their mouth parts in the process, and causing them to starve. You will need to do this consistently at 3-5 day intervals to prevent the next generation of aphids from getting established. Usually a two weeks of diligence will reduce the numbers to the extend that ladybugs and other beneficials can get to work and take over.