Cocktail Trees

[K-Rimes]

Is anyone into making cocktail trees? I’m always short on space and always needing cross pollination for better fruit set so over the last few years I’ve gone kind of Dr Frankenstein. Here are a few:


Santa Barbara peach with: Flavor King pluot, Sweet Treat Pluerry, Flavor Grenade pluot, Santa Rosa plum, Arctic Star Nectarine, Royal Lee, Minnie Royal, Royal Crimson, Spicy Z, Snow Queen Nectarine, Tropic Snow Peach, and Cotton Candy Aprium.


Feijoa with Coolidge, Improved Coolidge, Mammoth, Nazemetz, Nikita and 5 or so NZ varieties



Sabara jaboticaba with: white, red, otto anderson phitantra, escarlate, navel, paulista, ESALQ, fruiting sabara from my older tree, grimal, Coronata 1, 2, 3, and a few others I forget now


Pitangatuba with FFF selected "Lemonhead" and "Gigante" adding on more from another collector this Saturday



Apple tree with: Bill's Red Flesh, Goodland, Orange Pippin, Akero, Irish Peach, White Winter pearmain, Pink Pearl, Winter Banana, Dorsett, Anna


Another look at the cocktail, it's just unhappy right now due to winter but it is about to explode on every single branch


Unknown plum with all the same stuff that's on the SB peach

[Flgarden]

Omg! Very nice job!!
I made my lemon  to carry pomelo, grapefruit, key lime, Kaffir lime, Persian lime, naval orange and satsuma.
I like woking on persimmons too.
On fuyu i have saijo, lotus
On hachya - coffee cake
Ana

[K-Rimes]

Forgot to add this citrus that has:

Kinnow mandarin, pixie mandarin, meiwa kumquat, oroblanco grapefruit, valentine pummelo, xie shan satsuma, and Hawaiian pink shaddock

[Seanny]

Look good!

No space here so most of my fruit trees are multi-grafted.

[K-Rimes]

Look good!

No space here so most of my fruit trees are multi-grafted.

Post pics! I want to see others!

[elouicious]

You are killing it K-Rimes!

I've been trying to up my grafting game- so far my only successful cocktail is the Jabo-

I'll post some pics later

[johnb51]

Dude, you're a champ! 

[roblack]

Great job building up some diversified fruit factories in your multi-graft trees!

I am jealous =)

4 varieties, including rootstock, is as far as I've gone (mangoes).

Gonna try doing a yangmei cocktail tree.

[Tropicaltoba]

I’ve always wanted to do this with my feijoias (especially with the cross
Pollination needs) but I was worried the grafts would fail and the tree structure would be damaged. How did u learn what was the best way to graft them?

[Ado]

Ok I'm not the only nut. Santa Rosa plum with different peaches and plums. Santa Rosa flowering like crazy.

[Ado]

Avocado tree with a bunch of grafts. If I remember correctly I did 11 and 10 took. One broke during the high winds but the rest are growing well. One is already flowering this year. That was grafted in August 2022.

[K-Rimes]

I’ve always wanted to do this with my feijoias (especially with the cross
Pollination needs) but I was worried the grafts would fail and the tree structure would be damaged. How did u learn what was the best way to graft them?

At first I had fears about grafting and cocktailing, and especially feared what would happen if a graft failed - but then after doing it a bunch (and failing) I realized that at worst it's as though you pruned that branch and it'll sprout below the failed graft. Feijoa was one of my first cocktails and I used cleft grafts with good success. I couldn't find much if any information about what would work best so I just went for it.

I basically only use cleft, I don't really think there is much advantage to the other styles of grafts unless you're stumping something and want to do a bark graft, or in the case of really lanky trees with poor structure, you'd veneer graft. I have not had the opportunity to have plants big enough for approach grafts but I know those are really effective as well.

[Seanny]

1/2 Butterscotch
1/2 Alano.

[K-Rimes]

1/2 Butterscotch
1/2 Alano.

That's a really clean one! Seems like sapodilla really struggles with fruit set, so this is a winner in my books!

[Seanny]

A bunch of different varieties on this atemoya tree.




Grafted red and Trunciflora to this Sabara.
Grafting Coronata and another red.




Sabara handles winter here well.
Red struggles.

[TropicalFruitSeeker]

How'd you get the budwood from FFF ? I've got a pitangatuba thats grafting size and would love to toss on some named cultivars.!

[K-Rimes]

How'd you get the budwood from FFF ? I've got a pitangatuba thats grafting size and would love to toss on some named cultivars.!

I am on the FFF "skate team". Adam and I are connected via skateboarding as well as plants.

Forgot to add this multi CORG which has: ScottR, Ben's Beaut, Scarlet (Kevin Jones), and Escarlate (FFF) on a rootstock from Exotica



And also this multi Calycina which has Achetadomestica and Wildland Plants

[greenerpasteur]

With CA real estate premium and limited space, most of my trees are cocktail





I have 8 in 1 atemoya, 5 in one mango, 4 in 1 mango, alot of 2/3 in one guava, alot of 2/3 in one atemoyas, 6 in one citrus (pomelo, seedless tangerine), 4 in 1 wax jambu, 3 in 1 mulberry

[Nick C]

Ive purchased some apple, stonefruit, and Asian pear cocktail trees in the past but I’m always  adding new varieties to my  loquat, cherimoya, atemoya, persimmon, citrus, jujube, peach, and pear trees. Most varieties on one tree is my European pear with 12 currently

[K-Rimes]

I was sent photos of one of my cocktail jabos in full leaf out. Kind of miss it about now! I hope mine comes out from dormancy soon.

[sc4001992]

Kevin,

Ok, I will show my old grapefruit tree (multi-grafted) again for those of you who may have missed my photos before. This rootstock tree is about 30yrs old. I have 18 varieties grafted, now I added another 7. I was lucky to have many of these different varieties have ripe fruits about the same month, so I quickly took these photos for my records in 2022.

The navel oranges are two types, the Washington on the left side of the tree, and the Lane Late on the right side. Total number of ripe oranges was 70 (yes I counted them).

[K-Rimes]

Amazing work as usual Kaz! I need to graft all the new suckers that keep showing up on my gf's family cocktail I did. I wish I could do better with citrus at my house but the winter punishes my single lemon every year and it basically never grows.

[fliptop]

Kaz, WOW!!!

[eez0]

instead of grafting, I'm planting different varieties together and pruning to give the shape of a single tree.

I have golden japan, black amber and santa rosa plums. Apples Anna, Top Red, and forgot the name of the other (a variety from South Africa I think). Lemon and lime. Oranges navel late and sanguinelli (red).

[sc4001992]

Kevin, yes those suckers make good rootstock for grafting from the same tree. I should post my largest of the mult-grafted tree which is my Big Jim loquat. It has over 120 grafts with 84 different varieties on the one tree. I used a lot of the suckers that was ground level to graft some varieties. But when I left some of those suckers to grow taller before grafting, I noticed they were actually the Big Jim fruits on them. I still used those sucker Big Jim's to graft the other varieties since I don't need to use the ladder for grafting.