In many cases, for various reasons, amateur gardeners fail to inoculate the spring with a graft, and they are forced to re-carry out either the usual summer budding with a sleeping eye, or spring grafting with a graft the next year, which entails a loss of annual growth of grafts. I already have 58 years of successful experience in early (from May 25 to June 30) budding and grafting of many fruit plants using buds (eyes) and cuttings from the shoots of the current year.
For budding and grafting, the lower lignified or semi-lignified parts of the growing shoots are taken. When grafting at the end of May, when the new shoot has not yet become lignified, it must be cut off from the mother plant with part of last year's wood. It has developed conducting vessels that have not yet formed in the non-lignified part of the shoot of the current year, which means that it is able to grow together with the stock and be an intermediary in providing it with moisture and nutrients. When grafted at a later date, when part of the one-year-old shoot has already had time to lignify, good grafting survival is also observed when using cuttings without perennial wood.
In preparation for grafting, the leaves and herbaceous parts of the annual shoot are removed. When grafted with a graft, it should be short (maximum 2-3 buds). When budding, buds from the semi-lignified part of growing shoots take root well.
The technique and techniques of inoculation and budding are the most common. When grafting with a cuttings in hot weather, it is advisable to put on covers made of plastic wrap on the grafted cuttings before they grow together. The survival rate of budding and grafting at this time is very good or high due to the intensive growth of the stock. Grafted individual buds and buds on grafted cuttings bloom in a week, after a maximum of 12 days, and shoots begin to grow, reaching 20-50 cm by the end of July (depending on the timing of grafting, the quality of the rootstock and scion, and the weather).
Unlike spring grafting with a cuttings, these grafts grow very tightly with the stock and, with small sizes, do not require a garter to other branches or special rods, as well as some other operations to prevent breakage. This significantly reduces the laboriousness of caring for vaccinations. Shoots from late June budding and grafting, regardless of their length, to exclude winter freezing, require mandatory pinching (it is possible with the tips bending down) at the end of August for their faster lignification.
In this way I planted apple, pear, plum, cherry, apricot, mountain ash, hawthorn, irgu, quince, cotoneaster, bird cherry and other crops, and always got good results. I got cuttings for grafting from different places. Often he brought it himself, being on business trips, or received it by mail. When requesting the delivery of cuttings by mail, I always asked that they send me the May cuttings of the current year with a part of the perennial wood. Grafting of fruit plants at the specified time is especially suitable for the propagation of cherries, plums and apricots. Cherry, when grafted in spring by cuttings, due to the rapid oxidation of the sections, gives a very small percentage of survival. During summer budding with a sleeping eye, a significant number of buds do not have time to normally grow together with the stock until frost. An addition to the death of hibernating buds is also made by the constant partial podoprevanie and complete damping of these buds. And only early summer budding and grafting guarantees a good yield of grafted cherry plants. Plum and apricot, although they give a large percentage of the yield of established grafts or seedlings from spring grafting, nevertheless, from early budding and grafting, this percentage turns out to be much higher.Summer budding with a sleeping eye of these plants due to the massive damping off of grafted buds in winter in our conditions is generally meaningless.
I would also like to draw your attention to the convenience of using budding and grafting at the specified time in a more free time for amateur gardeners, since spring budding with a sprouting bud and grafting with a cuttings require the costs of the most intense and busy spring time, which is not always feasible.
At one time, my father, who mastered all the methods of vaccination at the same time with me, preferred early budding and vaccination to all other methods. He was especially proud of the almost 100% yield of cherry grafts, which were very poorly obtained by other amateur gardeners he knew. In my garden, a 55-year-old cherry tree of the Vladimirskaya variety, grafted with an eye on the offspring of the Volga steppe cherry, still grows and bears fruit in stanza form in my garden, although it is not very good.
For spring and early summer vaccinations, you need to prepare in advance. Stock up on cuttings and everything you need, and before this time comes to practice at the table, independently mastering the techniques of budding and vaccination or restoring skills lost over the winter.
