I think I want to start grafting trees to increase production and produce more favorable varieties and diversity. Anyone tried grafting some of the more productive persimmons on wild stock? What about grafting pecans onto hickory root stock? I have tons of wild hickories coming on from some tsi work that opened up my forest but no pecans and I have read, I should be able to graft pecans onto hickory. And then of course I want to try grafting my own apple trees as well and plant quite a few of those on my forest edges where I have some natural openings - both for us to harvest fruit and for food plots. Also paw paws - I have tons of those growing around me but a very few ever truly fruit very much - I have read there are quite a few good fruiting varieties of paw paws. thoughts or ideas?

I can't truly speak to anything but the apples as we graft alot of them every year for our nursery business. Apples can be grafted with many different graft types and are generally pretty forgiving and easy to graft. Lots of guys graft wild growing persimmons with other varieties or just even scion wood from female trees to increase the fruit production as you have separate male and female trees. I cant speak to the other things you have mentioned.

I don't know pecan to hickory. I would think they would since both are carya and crosses are known to occur.

But it shouldn't be difficult to get pecan rootstock as seedling trees are common where ever pecan occurs. Mater of fact it's common practice to plant nuts then graft.

From what I have read on pecans they grow faster then hickory and will eventually out grow the hickory to the point of splitting or breaking off.

Grafting

The result of improper matching is uneven growth. With a pecan grafted to a hickory, the top half of the tree will grow more quickly than the rootstock, making it top heavy and prone to splitting when branches become laden with nuts and leaves. The smaller and weaker bottom makes it more likely to topple in undesirable weather conditions. Finally, the fast growing pecan will require more nutrients than the slow growing roots of the hickory will be able to provide. The tree is likely to live only a portion of its life expectancy.

I've never done pecan to hickory, but I would think it would work as Warrior said.

Me and a friend of mine have been grafting oaks for about 20 years and it is working. Lots of failed attempts in the beginning, but it is a trial and error thing.

We wanted more diversity in our bottomlands so we started grafting both Q. alba and Q. michauxii on to our bur oaks. The bur oaks are more drought tolerant and can handle our climate, but the acorns off the eastern oaks is what we wanted.

We no longer graft on the outermost branches; too many strong winds in the spring break them off. Instead, we find a good 2-3" tree and take the canopy off of it and graft onto that. Seems to work much better. Pretty cool, we got bur oaks here that now produce swamp chestnut and white oak acorns; as well as bur acorns.

They definitely do grow faster. I'm forever cutting back seedlings around the yard.

I’ve grafted Asian persimmon onto American persimmons, apple onto crab apple, citrus onto trifoliata, and pears onto OHx97 pear rootstock. My experience has been Apple is the easiest, followed by citrus and pear, then persimmon being less cooperative but certainly worth doing.

I like the victorinox budding knife, but I also use a separate bark lifter when top working a 1”+ persimmon tree. Online videos show people using raffia and all sorts of binding materials, but I prefer using parafilm and a cut rubberband. I graft, parafilm, and then snugly wrap with a rubberband then tie to keep it snug. I’ve been using Elmer’s white glue to keep the buds or non graft union wounds from drying out, although you could use parafilm.


The paw paws: you say they’re not fruiting much. Could it be that a lot of the trees are off of root shoots? If so, adding some grafts could help. I do not have any producing paw paws yet, but I do know they typically require separate trees for pollination—root shoot trees won’t pollinate each other as far as I know.



I am growing pecan seedlings as well as hickory seedlings, and I can say that the pecans are growing at much, much faster rates. This leads me to believe that what was said about long term incompatibility above to be accurate. The exception may be in top working larger trees, although I’d do more research before much effort grafting pecans onto hickory. I would personally just plant cold stratified pecans to raise seedlings for wildlife or as rootstock for named varieties if you’re wanting to grow pecans for your own consumption.





That’s very interesting, glad you shared that. We have a lot of Q. michauxii and Q. stellata here. Not as many Q. alba, but I’ve been planting more.

I am going to be doing hot pipe callous grafting and hypocotyl grafting this Spring.

In hot pipe callous grafting you keep the roots and the top of the new tree cool and the graft union at 80F. This causes strong callous to develop in 2 to 3 weeks, at the union. It works very well for walnut and other hard to graft trees.

Basically you run a heating element in a pipe to heat it to 80F. You set the graft union against it and cover it with damp sawdust or mulch. You let the roots and top stay cool. I will use an omega grafting tool to make the cuts for the graft. The omega cut better holds the scion and the root stock together. Walnuts push a lot of sap and other cuts can be forced apart by it.

In hypocotyl gratfting, you top the very young root stock right above the cotyledons. The cotyledons are the two fat leaves, full of stored nutrition, that come out of the seed. You split the root stock between the cotyledons and place the scion starting at slightly below them. You then keep the new tree at high humidity, in a mostly sealed tote, at 80F, using a heat mat under the roots. The graft union will quickly heal and be very hard to see. No time is wasted growing out the root stock The graft union will be stronger than a traditional one.

Keith