grafting persimmon seedlings in situ

[khoomeizhi]

i've identified 9 or 10 smaller seedling american persimmon trees (and a few bigger ones) at my place and started grafting a few out to select cultivars this spring. here's one (actually two) of them earlier today, once i'd dragged a piece of wood out to aid in contrast:


some are a little too close together for long-term spacing, but i figure i can use them to grow out more scion as i plant out more of my own seedlings for more rootstocks.

there are a few more cultivars i'm hoping to get scion wood for in the next few years, as well as a couple favorite wild trees i know that i'd like to propagate closer to home...before long this little valley will be very persimmon-rich! (admittedly, it was already on its way...)

[steev]

A potential silver lining of global warming, to me, is that as Winter low temps moderate, on the farm, the Spring temperature whip-saw may also moderate to the point that I can grow persimmons, which I love; so far I've failed with 5 or 6 trees, which is a tad spendy.

[khoomeizhi]

i'm not ready to dive into kakis/asians yet (though there is one variety, steiermark (sp?) that is reputed to come from a mature tree in...austria?) but some of the others i'm looking at are american/kaki hybrids.

[khoomeizhi]

Update: the few persimmons I grafted last year that took are growing well. The one from the picture above is actually going to have a bit of fruit this year (I shouldn't let it have much, unless I stake the tree, it's already got a little lean to it).

I cleared around more persimmons during the winter, finding 14 more small trees of grafting age, and also cleared around 2 somewhat bigger trees that I decided to stockpile some of the genetics I've collected on, in case the grafts on smaller trees didn't take. It turned out that at least one attempted graft on each small tree did take, though.

I'm pretty excited about the varieties I added this year. Four are asian/american hybrids, four are from wild trees locally that I've really liked, size- and flavor-wise. Two more are large-fruited american cultivars.

I've since found another 4 rootstock trees for next year, and having a great time with all this.

pics to come.

[wildedge]

I have grafted in situ in early spring. It was my first time grafting hardwoods and got about 70% success rate. I refrigerated the scion wood in order to let the rootstock start to actively grow before it was grafted....maybe that helped.

In Australia where I am from American persimmons are almost unheard of, but I luckily found some growing wild near my farm that I have collected and grown seed off to set up an orchard of a few hundred trees. They are generally germinated in pots in autumn from fresh seed, then transplanted out in the spring. Without watering and weeding they still grow about 2 feet in the first year and 6 feet in the second, just with a small tree guard so I don't lose track of them in the overgrown pasture. Last autumn I experimented with direct sowing and got about 40% established that way, and will go back and plant the gaps this spring as before.

I also have a range of grafted asian types (all astringents) and was planning on starting a breeding program crossing the americans with the asians. Does anyone on the forum have much experience with the hybrid selections circulating in the USA? How do they perform? I will be using the underperforming american seedlings as rootstocks to graft onto in situ once I start generating hybrid seedlings.

[khoomeizhi]

Grafting when the rootstock has started growing in spring definitely helped. The recommendation I've seen in general for field-grafting (persimmon, pawpaw, nut trees, etc) is do it when the buds on the rootstock are as 'long as a squirrel's ear' (about a cm)

I have some experience with some of the hybrids available in the US, but not much. A rosseyanka tree I know is a regular heavy producer- I have high hopes for the 'kasandra' I grafted this past spring, which is rosseyanka crossed to another asian. Cliff england in kentucky is trialing a bunch of hybrids he did the pollenations for - reading the list of what's in his orchard, it's full of 'name 1' x 'name 2' hybrid type notation. Don't know if he could send scion to you or if you'd want him to, but he'd be a good brain to pick about this. He could certainly tell you how the more well-known hybrids compare to each other.

He can be contacted through their website, nuttrees.net