The Tropical Fruit Forum

Thanks Michael!

Let's see if anyone from the forum gets one of these.

Simon

I went to the NZ site. I haven't found a US distributor yet. I wanted first to find info on their products to see if that are something I may be interested in purchasing.

Simon

The company is extremely responsive and I pretty much got an instant response. Here is what a representative had to say:

Hello Simon,

If you go to the FAQ tab a lot of answers to common questions will be found. The manuals tab will also allow you to view or download user manuals. When I have access to wi-fi I will also send a few pdf brochures to you.
Also, if you click on the youtube link at the bottom of the home page you will be directed to our video channel. There are many film clips showing use applications and tool functions.

Thank you for your interest.

Regards,

I perform enough grafts to warrant purchasing one of those. I wish the company had a description of each tool without having to contact them. The hand held scion cutter appears to be well thought out and high quality as it appears it has easily replaceable blades.

If you contact the company, please share any information you find and I'll do the same.

Simon

Shane, thanks for the video, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Looks like it works so concept is proven. I was worried that the high speed saws would leave a damaged edge but the video proves that it works. This technique may prove especially beneficial for those with a shaky hand or just can't get straight cuts using their current grafting knife.

Simon

Simon,

you can borrow my grafting tool, that is sharp and you can put a lot of force to cut hard wood, cleanly. That tool I only use when wood is very hard.

Hey Behl, what type of grafting tool do you have? I have a grafting tool but it sucks, especially on Mango and the grafting tools seem to constantly need sharpening. I want to develope a method using power saws or high speed rotary tools that can give perfect cuts and is 100% repeatable and adjustable for different sized woods.

If you take a look at the cut scion, it's perfectly straight and the cambium was not bruised at all. My grafting tool used pressure and really damages the cambium. I know of a professional grafting tool that is several hundred dollars and apperars to work well but the cuts seem very short and wide. Thanks for any information.

Simon

Here I made the wedge on the scion much more narrow but exposed too much cambium.

The scion inserted into the double rootstocks. Notice that too much cambium is exposed

The final product. Very little chance this graft will take as both rootstocks split almost all the way to soil level and too much cambium was exposed. The scion was also not a perfect match.


The take home message is that I feel power saws are able to make great cuts on scions, especially on difficult hard woods. If I were to repeat this experiment, I'm sure I could get the scion to take with the experience I've gained from this first test run.

I will run a few more experiments using a Dremel or cut off tool to make perfectly straight wedges for cleft grafting softer woods such as Mango.

Simon

I mentioned the idea of using a power saw to make straight cuts on extremely hard wood such as for Jaboticabas and decided to try it out. It didn't work out exactly as planned but this test graft is extremely promising.

I have these two young Sabara rootstocks and they are probably at least 5-7 years from fruiting in my climate. I planted them next to each other in the hopes that I can graft a single large, mature and fruiting scion onto the two rootstocks.


I tried to cut the 3/4 inch diameter scion with my box cutter that I always use for my grafts but the wood was too hard to make straight cuts on the hard wood so I ran to my garage and used my miter saw. My saw was able to make incredibly straight cuts and the cambium did not appear crushed at all.

Initially, I made a short wide wedge on the scion but here is where everything started going wrong. The wide angle of the wedge split the two rootstocks really bad. I had to put the scion back on the saw to make a longer much more narrow wedge on the scion in order to be able to fit it onto the rootstocks which at this point were already split.



Simon

Here is the second part of the thread. These are various Jaboticabas grafted onto Sabara rootstock. These trees were grafted by Adam and not by me. Im hoping that by having them grafted onto Sabara rootstock, it will enable me to grow them without regular soil drenches of chelated micronutrients. So far, these trees have grown at a very fast rate. I got them as prehealed trees around December/January so all the growth you see is new.
Cauliflora(Paulista)



Coronata(Restinga)



Grimal



Simon

Rob, that's awesome, please keep us updated on the progress of these beautiful and delicious trees. You can see from Xshen's pictures that the double rootstock tree appears to be double the size of the single rootstock tree.

Xshen, that amazing! Proof is in the picture that double rootstocks will give added vigor to Jaboticaba trees. I am very eager to see if you get more, perhaps larger, maybe sweeter fruit? Will you get one additional crop compared to single rootstock? Will it try to fruit year round? Please keep us updated Xshen, I hope your double rootstock tree fruits sooner for you than the single rootstock tree. It seems the more I share with this forum, the more I learn.

Simon

Thanks everyone!

I've learned a lot from this forum and everything I know about Jaboticaba and grafting Jaboticabas is from Adam. I just love the flavor of Jaboticabas. To me, they have the sugar acid balance of Purple Mangosteen. Because of the slow growth of Jaboticabas, I really think multiple rootstocks will help.

Adam, thanks for the tip, that will save a lot of time by simply weaving them. Imagine weaving together several of our favorite varieties of Jaboticabas and then letting them fuse. Once they are fused, you take a scion from this braided Chimera and graft it onto whatever rootstock. I would imagine that the grafted scion would produce fruit from all different varieties. Adam, this may be a simple way for you to mass produce multigraft trees.

I forgot to mention that it was Xshen's success with his multiple rootstock Jaboticaba that also inspired me to do this. Time is too precious a resource to waste, sitting around, waiting for that Jaboticaba to finally produce. I was going to multigraft with multiple species of Jabs that are tolerant of high pH soils but I got lazy and felt Sabara grows so well anyways.

Frank, it may have healed sooner but I only noticed the the cracked parafilm yesterday. In general, i wait 2-3 months for my approach grafts to heal when working with hard or brown wood. My mango seedling approach grafts heal in as little as 2-3 weeks. In the copper leaf stage(newly sprouted seedling), they can be as fast as two weeks. For seedlings in the the green leaf stage 2-4 weeks is more common.

Simon

Watching Adam's(FlyingFoxFruits.com) Jaboticaba grafting videos got me itching to do some grafting of my own. Because Jaboticabas can take a while before they fruit, I feel it is worth the time to try innarching two trees together to create a double rootstock Jaboticaba tree.

I took these two young seedling Sabara trees and innarched them together on 06/16/16. the wood is very hard and it was relatively difficult to make straight cuts! It's been two months since approach grafting and I noticed that the parafilm was split so I decided to take a peak at how the callous/Union was doing. Here is a picture of the cracked parafilm.

Here is one side of the parafilm slightly peeled back


The other side peeled back


After seeing that the union has healed up nicely, I decided it was safe to top the weaker seedling.


Here is an ungrafted Sabara I've had for about 5 years, the trunk is about 1.5 inches in diameter and has not fruited yet.

Simon