I think this is a good time of year to graft. Humidity is high, light levels are high. Day length is long. Growth is strong. All good things! I just grafted a Cara Cara onto sour orange and so far so good.

Nice to hear your grafting is doing good. Do you think we the only one grafting to sour orange?

Steve

I've been grafting to Sour Orange, Tai-Tri, Citrumelo and to 'Flying Dragon'. I have heard that navels are really good on Sour orange, and I had a few seedlings growing that are approaching grafting size, so what the heck. I can buy sour oranges at the store -- they are loaded with seed.

Not that I really need more citrus, but I like to give them away as gifts.

All the grafts are doing well.

I love seeing your posts about grafting! Just make me happy for some reason and I really want to try, as impractical as it is for my situation.

Are your sour oranges in th store labeled as such? I'd like to get some rootstock seeds going just for fun but I don't recall ever seeing any "sour oranges" in my local grocery store.

They were just marked as 'Sour Orange'. No particular variety name. Loaded with seeds. Fruit was, well, sour, but not bad! No more tart than a lemon. Made a good -ade drink with sugar.

FYI: Phoenix has lots of sour orange trees growing as landscape trees along freeways and such. Shouldn't be too hard to find sour orange in Arizona! They probably are irrigated and probably drop a ton of fruit. Maybe there are even some little seedlings growing up under the trees.

I found this online:

• "The Arizona State University, Tempe campus, is abundant with a large variety of citrus trees and particularly rich in Seville orange trees. For many years, a majority of the hundreds of pounds of Seville oranges produced on campus each season were either donated to a local animal refuge or simply thrown away, at the university’s expense. The ASU Grounds Services Department did what they could to prevent as many oranges as possible from being wasted, but at the end of the day many oranges had to be thrown out before they started to decompose."

A friend got my Seville at Jungle Jim's and gave it to me for my early birthday present.

Steve.

Thanks for the info. The neighborhood I used to live in had lots of citrus growing on the streets. I was told they were not tasty but no one ever knew what variety they were. Perhaps those were sour oranges. I will go back during harvest time and grab a few ;).

2 T-Buds of Poncirus trifoliata on Sour orange.

Last august grafting of the same

Steve

That is an unique graft. A dwarf scion growing on a quick growing root stock.-

Amazing, too advanced for me though! I haven't passed the pre-requisite course yet, Citrus 101.

I plan to graft Meiwa kumquats to the PT scions for 3 trunked trees. Kumquats can not be grafted to sour orange directly. Having 2 trunks of PT will help in getting a large Meiwa tree much faster.

Thanks for the idea Steve, I was wondering about grafting Meiwa kumquats. They only seem to sell Nagami in my area, and I'd heard Meiwa could only go on certain rootstocks. Still, seems like a lot of work....

I have 2 extra sour orange trees so I grafted them. Do you live in a citrus restricted state.

Steve

Yep. Makes it more challenging to get stuff because I can't import anything from online sources.

update.1 graft has made it. 2 week old graft

I have rewrapped the graft an placed a light on it after sunset to start pushing the bud.

Steve

Congratulations Steve!

Steve, I think you can also make a gash in the bark just above the graft to get it to push.

I am going to wait another 2 weeks and if the bud still looks good I'll make that gash and snap the tree over 3 inches above the bud.. In 2 more days I will unwrap the 2 PT grafts.

Steve

Here’s the Panzarella orange on Sour Orange chip bud that I did about three weeks ago . I think I can detect the bud swelling. I did a small gash in bark above the graft after a little over 2 weeks, which you can see. The Sour Orange really, really wants to grow. I've been rubbing off every new sprout as they appear.

Chip bud is one of the the graft types that I have had success with. I tried T-budding, but I usually ended up making a real mess of the bark. Plus this is easier on smaller size rootstocks. On this chip bud graft, I like making that little flap at the bottom of the rootstock cut. It helps to hold the chip in place while wrapping and also gives another surface to fuse with the chip. I like to use Buddy Tape for wrapping. It's 1" wide and perforated so you can easily tear off small portions while in the middle of the process.