Cleft Grafting

[KSQ2]

Here are a couple that give you the basics of W&T:

Sometimes, you end up with a scion and root stock where it is tough to match diameters. Here is an interesting technique for that case:

thank you

 

[Trav]

I don’t thinking getting the right sized scions will be a problem, since I’m harvesting them myself and I have a LOT of limbs to choose from. I don’t even have a grafting knife though, what is the advantage of those over a sharp pocket knife, practically speaking? I’m not opposed to using a cheap grafting tool, if they are still available. I’ll need to speak with David to see the general diameter of the rootstock he’ll be sending me.

Also, are cleft grafting and whip and tongue the same technique with different names?

For good scions, they rarely even get to 1/2 inch 3/16 to 3/8 is about the size that you want, vertical growth, usually waterspouts on branches or near last year's pruning cuts are the best ones to take. You want that nice fast growing smooth wood, not the curly, knotty fruiting wood, that's a big mistake I made my first year grafting Asian pears, because I thought the fruiting wood would work well, I lost about half of them, even where the grafts were good enough that good material would survive.

This is one of the reasons why a large cleft graft will have a scion on each side, and even a small cleft graft will actually be a modified cleft graft to match your smaller scion, but if you're buying rootstock chances are you'll be able to go straight down the middle with a lot of them.

Another good graft that's easier than whip and tongue is the side lap, that can be done on literally any size, although at some point you might as well just do a bark graft.

Here is my favorite grafting guy, please pardon his accent, he's not only from Portugal, he still lives there.

This will explain 3 of the grafts we mentioned here:

And this is just about cleft grafting, but only with subtitles though.

And if you're ready for the crazy master, I love this Russian guy, he has a way of making everything work, green scions, grafting with a drill, you name it. But the translation on subtitles is usually terrible, so that might not be your thing:
https: