Hi All,
This is a bit of a long post, so bear with me if you want the story. It's been a while since I have created a new thread or posted. It's been a busy Summer and a lot has been going on, but I wanted to share some experiences with you all.
A little backstory. I was fascinated last year, when our forum friend Raul offered to sell us scions from the infamous Limoncillo/Luc's Garcinia we have all been clammoring to try. Unfortunately, I have very little experience grafting, I had no rootstock, and only a slight hope any scions would make it here and still be viable. I'm in Maryland, so I also have a short window to do this (The Summer). I figured, well somebody is bound to sell one. I looked high and low, and couldn't find one for sale. The only options to have any chance at fruiting became clear ... to wait for my little seedlings to maybe grow fruit in a decade ... or to try to graft them on my own(still a longshot on that fruit, but still).
So this year I set out to be prepared for Raul's sale. I've only ever grafted 3 times before this. A failed attempt at Rollinia, a 2nd failed attempt at the same Rollinia, and a failed Citrus graft experiment earlier this Spring ... so I watched Adam's Garcinia Laterifolia grafting video probably a thousand times. I like to think I'm a pretty quick learner as well. I then read up on advice here (Many thanks Carlos ) using Shick Injector Blades and ordered some and picked up a xacto knife from WMart. I had "buddy/budded tape"(AM Leonard) from my failed attempts, and so I gathered all my materials.
I ordered Limoncillo(Luc's Garcinia), Mangosteen(because who doesn't want a grafted mangosteen?), and for fun Garcinia Brasiliensis scions. Thanks to a kind friend in PR, who I'm very grateful to, I obtained 5 near-sapling size and 1 extra seedling size Achachairu. I already had one seedling size(from yet another friend years ago), which I didn't want to touch, and one intermedia which I wanted to use for variation. They came in time to be potted up, and given time to adjust and then I came home from a trip to NYC to find a package of scions ... a couple days later, because my absent minded father didn't give me all my mail when I got back. That was a bit frustrating, anyway I rushed to prep all my materials and my trees.
These were such big beautiful Achachairu, I couldn't help but set one aside. I'd like to have fruit of this as well some day.
I grafted up 5 of the Achachairu along with my 1 Intermedia.
This one I grafted 2 Limoncillo scions on 1 very healthy sapling. It may have been a bad idea, but I learned from this. It failed and has now pushed new Achachairu leaves from the nodes. I was really hoping at least one would take.
The Intermedia with 1 Limoncillio scion also failed. It has pushed really lush new leaves, which is nice, since it pretty much sat for 2 years pushing nothing.
This is 1 Mangosteen on 1 Achachairu. It was a gamble to try an Asian Garcinia on a New World Garcinia(Rheedia). It is still deciding what it wants to do. I keep any rootstock growth pruned off, but still see no scion growth. Still holding out hope for it though. The scion has not shriveled.
The same goes for the Garcinia Brasiliensis scion. I put both of the 2 that I got onto 1 Achachairu, and the side graft failed, but the top graft is still green, just not pushing anything. Fingers crossed, and maybe it will.
Now the fun part. My possible success...
Going into this, I kept up my optimism, and almost on the same timeline as the failures were these two possible successes, and I am saying little prayers that they flourish. I was over the moon when I saw the following, and still am.
Pretty soon after grafting, I observed, no dying scion. A very good sign. My previous attempts at grafting had resulted in a pretty quickly dying scion. Then about a week or two later I started to see the littlest spear of new leaves popping through the buddy tape. I was over the moon. It somehow made all the trouble worth it. The following show what it's at about now and it continues to grow.
It was my only Limoncillo that has pushed and didn't shrivel.
The following is a Mangosteen scion. This made me equally happy. My only concern with this is that it had a long time to push through the buddy tape, and the scion is really dark midway and below. Anyone know if this is rot or something else bad?
Thanks all for reading. I'll keep all of you updated as long as you want, and if you have any questions or comments please feel free. I realize I may be "jinxing" these attempts, but I couldn't help but share with my friends here.
I know I have to baby these until they really heal and harden at the graft site, so I guess my only question is when to remove the buddy tape?
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