Is there a reason that I couldn't bud graft now?

I realize that it's after the main part of the season.

Is T-budding or chip budding more likely to be successful?
Thanks
John S
PDX OR

I have been wondering the same thing. From what I understand there will not be enough active growth before dormancy. Then again, I am a newbie so I am not the best one to take advice from

My conceptual understanding, that the energy is now headed downward to the roots for storage, doesn't consider if there would be enough undifferentiated juice to 'knit' the cambium layers together.

I guess I'd say give it a try , but not be too invested in the outcome.

James

I have looked into some text books of studies done up to 1990. It is usually necessary to have the upward points of the plant to be lively and producing auxins at the time of grafting. Without the proper green light the cambium and xylem won't complete to make the bud or the union functional. I doubt that much of this is going on this time of year unless your budding onto an evergreen plant which is active most times, if not always in the year.

Good idea though! Because one thought would be to experiment budding or side grafting this time of year to a stock you can find of an evergreen of any types that are to exist which posses as a property a close enough background (relative) to the fruit type you want to graft on.

Should make sense. Any other thoughts?

Interesting banter.. I’ve never bud or chip grafted but have watched it done. ...seems that was around mid August. It was described that no growth was expected from the bud for that season, just an indication that it ‘knitted’ and was alive and ready to grow the following season. I was told the nursery workers walked the rows in late winter cutting off the grafted rootstock just above the bud if it shown viability.

Just thinking out loud ...what would be gained from a late season graft? My guess it little to nothing. If it was worth the effort or risk, the commercial guys would likely be doing it. …and I mean fruit trees at our latitude outside of a greenhouse.

I suspect the reason they wouldn’t mess with late season grafts is the ‘more likely’ potential for it to die from winter cold. As ‘mid summer’ appears to work well for them, allowing the newly knitted bud to ‘harden off’ along with the stock, there’d be no reason or benefit to chance losing the graft to winter dieback.

With ‘us’ Home Orchardist’s – we’re free to do any nutty thing we darn well please But for me, the safest process still appears to be collecting the mature bud sticks (scion wood) in late fall, storing it in a safe place and connecting it to wherever when Winter has past… The Spring juices will begin to flow and (leaving two or three buds as opposed to making that many “T-buds” on one stock) the scion will safely take off like every other bud.

…just my thoughts. And though it’s deeper into October than when this question was posed - don’t let me stop you

original post 10-21-12:
One thing that I didn't know before is that cleft grafting is one of those kinds of grafting operations that can be performed either in the spring or before leaf fall. It is suggested to work good on plum or cherry. Information is provided from page 99 to 100. Spells out some little advantages done in the autumn versus spring. The disadvantage Viron suggests about freezing of late grafted scions outside might still apply around here especially (per article) if the the autumn timing is off so that proper winter hardening would be impossible. However in my experience scions can take freezing in storage and still be fine so I think the main issue not being knitted to the stock properly would be water loss. Even then cleft grafting provides a very tight squeeze on the scion wood which think would allow water to come and go at will. Wood is the xylem layer I believe. (i always have to look up plant terms because I'm an electrician by trade) By the way the book is over a hundred years old and is focused mainly on propagation in France ;
http://archive.org/stream/artgraftingan ... 8/mode/2up

added 11-9-12:
Here is the same book in a PDF format for easiness of use to those using the Google Chrome browser ;
http://ia700309.us.archive.org/8/items/ ... ltgoog.pdf