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« on: February 09, 2024, 03:40:45 PM »
Theres been a lot of people asking me for scion wood to do bark grafting of avocado trees lately. Its not just 1 or or 2, its 5 or more people all wanting to do this in February. Im telling everyone the bark will not slip right now. You can do cleft grafts but I don't think the bark grafts will work out. Thats why I have been doing this grafting work in December. The trees still have sap flow and can be bark grafted. Thats working quite well the last few years.
I'm just putting this here so people can understand the best timing for doing avocado grafting and top working.
If you want to stump a large tree, the best time to do that is mid summer. It takes 2-3 months and you will have plenty of new growth to graft onto in December-April. That would be small cleft grafts.
If you want to top work a tree with 1-2inch diameter branches or main trunk, you can cut it back in early december (in southern CA) the sap will still be flowing and bark will peel off and be able to do bark grafts. Or you can wait until it warms up again and do it in maybe April. By that time, the grafts will be seeing a lot more heat and will be hard to get good takes if you live in a hot interior area. If its a mild coastal area, spring and even summer grafting is not a problem. Just shade the grafts until well healed and thry are fine.
If you want to do cleft grafts, of course the timing is not critical. It is just getting the stumping and bark graft timing down that is more important.