very ironic- im very clumsy with my hands, dont own a grafting knife (use a box-cutter, am not as careful as im supposed to be about cleaning the knife after each cut,didnt bother to completely cover the scionwood, and generally, dont know what the f im doing when it comes to grafts, yet i grafted 4 apple scions last spring and all of 4 of them took and are growing nicely this year (didnt get any blossoms this year, did last year!)I also didnt think my grafts would take so i didnt bother to label them- i know that the 4 consist of Bell-De Boskoop, Ashmeads Kernel, Karmije De Sonnaville, & Kidds Orange Red. the apples should looky pretty distinct, one form the other, so hopefully, ill be able to tell when the apples eventually appear.

Because Topanga is my beloved home town I feel I should at least try to help you out here, although, when I was caring for fruit trees there several decades ago, I didn't even know what grafting was. Grafts take best, by far, on vigorously growing trees with grafts placed on upward, vigorously growing shoots- except when trees are ruthlessly cut to stubs and cleft grafts are placed on those stubs. Grafts can be slowed by hormones sent down from higher up on the branch. To stop this downward flow scoring can be done where a sharp saw is used to cut into the cambium on the trunk just above the branch that holds the graft. Here grafts can be slowed by aphids and leaf hoppers to the point where they just dry up and die or runt out. Runted out grafts can become spur bound where all energy goes into making flowers and fruit. Even picking off flowers early doesn't necessarily return such grafts to vigorous growth but that's what you have to do. Presumably, if a graft survives on a healthy tree it can eventually be coaxed to vigorous growth.

Thanks Lonnie, Pagan and Marie for your nice words.It sure was a nice feeling and great satisfaction to be able to see it grow from seeds, sucessfully grafting it and see it blooms.

Did you get a chance to try your hand at grafting this year? Its kind of therapeutic.........until you do it everyday for 4 months. Cant wait to see how those grafts look in a few years. Hopefully they are as nice as their parent plants. I am particularly excited about the sempervirens. How large of a branch on the mother tree was gold and was there any burning? Did it look a little slower than the rest of the tree because of a lack of chlorophyll? If it looked the same as the rest of the tree, when grafted on its own I wonder if it will become a little slower... kind of the dream. Nice finds