Jack,
What are your other plans for late winter/January seed propagation,grafting,etc
Its almost that time !!
bill
Well, I thought I had a hit with Burnt Ridge, but no luck. Their first response by email was "we have 15 in stock currently and can ship now". When I called, they told me the lady that responded didn't know what she was talking about and they were out.
It is looking like I might need to order 50 from a wholesaler. Last year, I grew a boat load of ACs from nuts. I ended up with way more than I could transplant into 3 gals. I planted some in the yard and gave a bunch to another forum member that is local. I plan to keep the ones I transplanted for a second growing season so they are in my cold room.
I collected a few nuts from my Dunstan's that are in cold stratification that I plan to start this winter. I have one Seguin that I started from a nut last year that survived. I may try to nut graft some scions from it to my Dunstan nuts just to see if I can. I had hoped to do more work with Sequins but I could find none anywhere. The few I had from the wildlife group caught some disease (from my apples likely) and died. They were not selling them this year.
A few years ago, I started playing with growing apples from seed and then grafting them over. The idea was to keep a few lower branches of the seedling and have the rest a grafted tree. If any of the seedlings produced good fruit, I would then use them for grafting. My thinking was that the genetic variety of seedling apples would have broader disease resistance than grafted varieties. Well, that was the plan, but it didn't work out great. Many of the seedlings were disease prone and got culled. Those that got planted did "ok" so far, but will likely produce full size trees and take a number of years to produce.
So, this year, I decided to focus more on using clonal rootstock. I ordered a bunch of DR scions from GRIN. I plan to try to get M111 rootstock. As soon as the scions come in, I hope to graft them. I'll then put them in my cold room for a couple weeks for the grafts to callus. I'll then pot them up in RB2s and put them under lights. I'll grow them out on my deck next summer and plant them in the field next fall. My hope is to maximize first year growth by giving them an early start and good care on my deck.
I'll do my normal field bark grafting of persimmons next spring. That is all I have planned right now but I may add more if opportunities arise.
Thanks,
Jack
