Post #4367353

2026-08-04 00:35 UTC

What's going on in my world? I've been sick in bed for the past few days and it is boring. Thankfully, last week I got a lot of scions and cuttings from the Rare Fruit Society and have had enough energy to do some grafting in the backyard. Joy of joys! It feels very strange that grafting is possible, but I am not complaining. I have grafted heaps. I grafted 10 grafts on the grape vine near the back of the house because dad realised that he was foolish to plant a non-fruiting grape vine there. He likes eating grapes more than anyone else in the house but he is not always the most logical thinker when it comes to garden planing. Anyway, hopefully some will take and we will have some grapes to eat. I grafted some of the vine that grows grapes that taste like fake grape flavour, which he is not excited for but Skip @Shannonfrog@adlsolarpunk.net and I are. The second plum tree is well on its way to not being the exact same variety as the first plum tree, now that 10 (!) of the grafts from last year have taken. Well, 11 did but I removed one because it was in a bad spot, but get this - I can graft it again. Nothing can stop me. I have grafted even more in it and soon it will be all different, better plums. Rejoice! Next to do: the apple tree. We have an old stinky shitty coddling-moth riddled granny smith apple tree that no one likes except for the moths. My plan? Chop it down to the stump and 10 or so branches, then graft a bunch of new varieties onto it and hope for the best. Fingers crossed! I went to graft some varieties on it last year but that was when I had my fateful uh-oh moment and cut myself with the Very Sharp Grafting Knife. The cut was minor (and a very clean, even cut, due to the nature of the knife) but was enough to scare me away from any more grafting for the rest of the season. Now I have my special song that I sing: "Careful wiggle don't cut my-self". Lo and behold, I cut slowly and carefully. Careful wiggle.

Replies (2)

@FigFan55@adlsolarpunk.net 2026-08-04 00:36

I should get points for reaching the character limit exactly. #WhatIfMastodonHadAchievementsAndLeaderboards

Open ##4367356
@FigFan55@adlsolarpunk.net 2026-08-04 01:15

And of course, it goes without saying that I have grafted lots of fig trees. I would say they are the second easiest to graft in my experience, grapes being the first. Grapes have a very wide cambrium layer and so are easy to match up, and figs are quite flexible and so easy to fit together and create a good join, whereas plums/apricot seem to be a bit tougher and less flexible. This of course could have no bearing on the success rate - it may be too late in the year for a high success rate. The tree/vine sap is already flowing even though we've barely started August. I am wondering what it will be like should we reach a point in our changing climate where these deciduous fruit trees have no period of dormancy. Scary to think about but for many other reasons before this one - fruit trees are not the first metric by which I measure climate disaster. Anyway, I digress. I'm also planning on grafting my shahtoot mulberry - I have a purple Pakistani variety to graft onto my white shahtoot variety, and some other mulberries that are doing nothing on which I can graft my white shahtoot and then give them to people who wish to eat delicious berries.

Open ##4367876