And Grafting Starts

It was such a nice day to work in the garden. Temperatures were in the mid to high 70s and I could here the bees buzzing around the flowers that were blooming in the backyard.

Inca Plum Blooms

Some of the fruit trees, specifically the Plums trees, were starting to flower and bud, so it was time to start grafting. I took the scions out of the refrigerator and inventory of what I got.

2016 Scions

I collected the Plums, Plucots, Pluots, Apricot, Cherry and Avocado scions… found my grafting knife and grafting tape… got my camera and started grafting.

I did a total of 11 grafts including:
– Asian Plums: Elephant Heart and Black Splendor
– Apricot: Canadian White
– Plumcot: Apex
– Pluot: Prosser and Dapple Dandy (Dinosaur Egg)
– Cherry: Coral
– Avocado: Mexiola

Busy Gardening Day…

It was a busy gardening day. I started by planting a few Green Onions bottoms with the others I planted last week.

Planting Green Onion Bottoms

I start grafting onto our two Asian Plum trees:
Bubblegum Plum (which I’m really interested in tasting, so I grafted it in two locations)
Plum ‘Golden Nectar’
Pluot ‘Flavor Supreme’

People Watcher

This bird kept watching me as I was grafting scions onto our Plum tree. I thought it would fly away if I moved, but even after I walked around and climbed the ladder, it just stayed there. It eventually flew away.

I wanted to graft some Cherry scions, but I couldn’t find any good sites to graft onto… So I left it, and I’ll check our Cherry tree later.

Planting Swiss Chard, Beets and Mesclun

I had some plant that have been in cell packs since the fall, and they are still alive, so I planted the Swiss Chard into 5 gallon fabric pot and Beets ‘Chioggia’ into a large Daiso pot. I had two leftover Flat Leaf Parsley which I planted into a 3 inch pot for now, until i find a permanent place for them in the garden. Hopefully, these plants will grow big despite being left in their cell packs.

I also did a bunch of seed sowing. I sowed all of the Zesty Salad Mesclun Mix into a medium Daiso pot. I don’t think these grew well in the past and I just wanted to get rid of the seeds.

Sowing Spring Greens/Flowers

I planted the rest into cell packs:
Agrostemma ‘Ocean Pearls’
Agrostemma ‘Milas’
Bok Choy ‘Fun Jen’
Bok Choy ‘Purple Choy’
Kohlrabi ‘Early White Vienna’
Bok Choy ‘Summer Boy’

Kiwi Leafing Out

A couple of the Kiwi plants have started to leaf out. I was worried that they died in the winter at their new location, but they seem to have pulled through. They was a couple dead/dried out branches which I trimmed. The rest of the blue bin where they were was empty, so I decided to plant a row of Super Sugar Snap Peas.

Sowing Sugar Snap Peas

Afterwards, I did a major trim of the European Plum tree in back of our storage. There were tons of dead limbs and limbs that sagged down. I tried to clear the bottom so we had walking space and just get rid of too much of the mass. I think it looks better now and hopoefully will grow better. Unfortunately, the Kirke Blue Plum that I grafted to it dried up.

Asian Plum Breaking Dormancy + Asian Plum Grafts Update…

Last week, my Mom showed me that the Asian Plum (near the storage) is starting to bloom.

Asian Plum Starting to Bloom

This Asian Plum tree is always our first deciduous fruit tree to break dormancy… This means that I need to start grafting to it… and I haven’t even sorted the scions that I got this year, so I have to do that soon.

Asian Plum Tree

I took inventory of all the grafts that I made on this particular Plum tree and I’m happy that many are still alive. These include:

Asian Plum ‘Elephant Heart’ (Graft 2009-04) Flickr
Plumcot ‘Apex’ (Graft 2010-05) Flickr
Pluot ‘Flavor Supreme’ (Graft 2010-04) Flickr
Asian Plum ‘Inca’ (Graft 2011-01) Flickr
Apricot ‘Large Early Montgamet’ (Graft 2011-04) Flickr
Asian Plum ‘Sierra’ (Graft 2011-03) Flickr
Pluot ‘Flavor Queen’ (Graft 2010-02) Flickr

Asian Plum 'Sierra'

It’s kinda neat how this one tree now has Plums, Plumcots, Pluots and Apricots.

Sadly two grafts did not make it:

Aprium ‘Mark’s Seedling’ (Graft 2010-03)
Asian Plum ‘Inca’ (Graft 2011-02) which is ok because this was a duplicate graft

I also took some time to prune some on the limb back, especially the ones that hang too low or crossed other branches.

Plumcot? Pluot? Aprium?

I noticed some Plumcot, Pluot and Aprium scions at the last CRFG Scion Exchange… I know they are all Plum/Apricot crosses, but I wonder if there is a technical difference between the three… so I posted an inquiry at the California Rare Fruit Growers Facebook page.

I’ll update this post if I get any responses.

[Update Jan 25, 2010] Someone on Facebook responded with a link to Dilip Barman (dilipB) > Still Life > Plums, Apricots, Plumcots, Pluots®, and Apriums®

Plumcot = Plum x Apricot

Pluot® = Plumcot x Plum (2/3 plum and 1/3 apricot)

Arium® = Plumcot x Apricot (1/3 plum and 2/3 apricot)

*Pluot® and Aprium® are federally registered trademarks of Zaiger’s Inc. Genetics, Modesto, CA, for interspecifics that are complex hybrids of plum and apricot.