I have room for 7 more varieties, with three spoken for. Ihave rooted cuttings of Black Bethlehem and Excel that need to grow large enough to approach graft, and I lost my Champagne grafts over the winter. i didnt get them while at LSU thinking I already had it. Ill get some soon.

i hope toget native black, and I have a few more coming in the mail. j ust about full, though that may be counting chickens.

Whew.  Ok, all full, or at least spoken for.

37 new varieties grafted in 82 grafts (give or take)this spring, plus 7 that made it from last year, with two spots left for Excel and Bethlehem Black when last year's rooted cuttings of them are large enough for approach grafting.

That's 44 (soon 46) varieties on one tree! Plus the root stock.

Many many thanks to those of you here who helped make this happen. 

If history is any guide, some grafts won't take despite looking great for now.  I hope to have rooted cuttings of some of these to try again with approach grafts

An overwhelming proportion of my grafts appear to be taking.  Here are a few pics



malformed breba

 


 



a chip graft

 



Two sides of a graft from last year.  I keep them wrapped in parafilm for as long as possible, and the humidity seems to induce callous formation on the outer surface of the bark.  (One of the chip grafts from this year put out a root!)

 



 



with or without rubber bands, which degrade pretty rapidly, the paraffin tape frequently will split along its length, and thickness.  I have been just rewrapping new tape over the old tape.  Here a few pics of the young Galban graft that had two brebas on it, with the tape pulled back before rewrapping (which shook both brebas off)


 





Ischia Green chip graft before rewrapping.  This is just down-branch from the "lazy graft", which looks great.  The approach graft even further up-branch, however, I think I separated a bit too early fromt he donor rootstock, and is drying up. 


 

The lazy graft

 


Panache

 



The arrows may not show, but here are a series of typical branch-ends, with two grafts taking on each.

yellow arrows: bark or whip grafts
red arrows:  chip grafts

 

 


 




The LSU orchard 4/9/14

 

Please do your best to ripen the breba, I am so interested to see what it will become of it.

Hi Brackishfigger,
Thanks for the update.

The orchard looks funny to me as fig trees hate lawn . Lawn will keep them feet wet and thus not promoting deep roots which is what we should go for.

What an amazing creation you have there!

One great far out idea leads to another. 
You have made grafting look easier than rooting cuttings?  I am running about 60% success rooting.  Most have been my mistakes but also many times weak and damaged cuttings make it impossible.

So if you are lucky enough to have a mother tree and can manage the timelines why not graft some of the precious new cuttings? 
3 cuttings could provide you 2 cuttings to attempt rooting and up to 3 buds for grafting.
The successful grafts can then be layered or provide cuttings in the future:)

I'm jealous! I tried grafting several varieties and all have failed with the exception of a couple T grafts. After seeing your pics though I believe I can remedy my mistakes. Thanks for posting, very inspirational!

I love your project. keep us updated.   my tree lost the grafts I put in it, I guess the new grafts were too cold for the long soggy winter. I wish you have better luck than me.

Wow!  Really cool, man.  I love it!

Do you wrap over the bud with parafilm on your chip bud or do you leave the tip of it exposed so it doesnt have t force its way out throught the film? Also after rapping and waxing it do you cover it with foil or leave it exposed to the sun? If you wrap it with foil, do you remove the foil when the bud starts to swell or before that point?

Fascinating project! I can't wait to see how it ends up producing for you!

Do you sterilize your tools before you cut the plants?

Great grafting techniques, thanks for the inspiration!

I am in the watch and wait phase of the grafting season.  Lots of watching.  Two or three varieties have tenuous footholds, with only Armenian showing absolutely no signs of life.  The rest look pretty solid in at least one graft.

My persimmon grafts seem to have all taken too!  Two grafts each of three new varieties onto six main branches of a Saijo . 

My blueberries are loaded, tomatoes growing faster than I can pinch suckers, new asparagus bed looking strong (Purple Passion and Jersey Knight), and citrus setting fruit.

Here are a few progressive close ups of a chip graft, Bealle, I think


 


 


 


 


Same graft, other end


 



A bark graft. 


 



A few closeups of the Malformed Breba (a great name for a rock band, BTW)

 


 

 

I think you just lost to this guy with his 70 varieties of grapes grafted onto one single plant, in which 22 are already producing fruit. their goal is to have 190 new varieties... unreal for them and you also.. if only your brebas behave...

http://todovinho.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

A few updates.  The malformed breba didn't like the rain, and quickly browned and rotted

 


THe "lazy graft" appears to have taken, but the approach graft using the still-rooted scion is no more.  I cut the graft off of the potted donor/scion plant too soon and the graft browned over time and the leaves dried up and fell off.  Even worse, when I pulled the graft out, it appeared to have taken after all.  dang it.  Ill try again and be more patient.  The rootstock is healing well

  


Here is nice looking chip graft

 


Here are several pics of the same whip/tongue graft, with the extra flap of bark/cambium from the rootstock as I described above.  If only they all took this well. . .

 

 

THis one shows the extra flap.  It looks like some of it (most?) has fused/joined/grafted pretty well

 


I have now had every single cultivar show some growth in at least one graft, with two very late bloomers. 

My UCR135-15  end graft (whip or cleft?, Blue arrows) finally greened after 6-7 weeks, and the chip graft up-branch (pink arrow) is just greening today a full 8 weeks later.  The red arrow is from the rootstock I let leaf out for some shade.  I did that in a lot of places.

 


 



Armenian was my other late bloomer, showing green for the first time today after 8 weeks of looking like a dead stick.   


 



I have learned to just leave them alone.  If they dead, they gonna fall off without my help!

As the tree grows ever outward (and some varieties are going nuts with over 2ft of growth already), I am training multiple branches of each variety to the horizontal, to fill out the increasing circumference.  I am hoping to avoid exclusive use of the "stake and string" method for want of ever increasing numbers of stakes (I rip them from 2x4s, four per) and the kinda fugly appearance. 

I am instead using some fiberglass rods I salvaged after the little ones ruined yet another cheapo tent, about 2.5 feet long.  I tie the rod in two places up-branch to secure it, and will be pulling the branches down as they grow

Thanks for all the cool updates. Very interesting project. :)

Hi brackishfigger,
On an healthy stem, I remove every weird looking fig as soon as I spot them... be it brebas or maincrop .
Could you make 4 pics west, north, south, east of the tree, just to see the global volume and surface used ?

Inspiring and educative, and that is to say the least.  Thank you for your time and dedication and all the photos (for all of us in the St. Thomas category). 

I have just been pulling off the parafilm as it splits and leaving them bare, with no apparent effect.  Hasn't gotten really hot yet though.

The only variety I have definitely lost is Champagne from LSU, a late addition I grafted in April from a non-dormant scion.  I hope to get another.

Almost all grafts are growing robustly, with a few less so.

A few pics

Bark grafts:  I cut a flat face on the scion that is roughly half its thickness, and it rests flush against the face of the cut rootstock for stability.  To expose the cambium on the scion, I shave/scrape top of the outer edges of the point, the part that makes contact with the rootstock after being shoved under its bark.  Instead of the usual method of making only one cut along length of the rootstock with the knife straight up and down,  I remove a very acute triangle length of the rootstock bark, and I do it using two very angled cuts (knife almost laying down on the branch) so that there is an "overhang" of bark that can lay upon the scraped scion surface rather sit above it.  I don't know if this made a difference, but it's what I did.

You can see the roots that grew out of the bottom of the first graft.  I wonder if they will (would have? but for no parafilm as of today) fuse with the lower margin of the rootstock branch.

 

 

Chip grafts


 


The graft below was photo'd just after unwrapping the cracked parafilm.. The graft promptly dried up and died.  I really should learn not to pick and leave well enough alone.

 



Whip Grafts 


 

 


THis is what happens when I create a great whip graft joint in the scion, before realizing it is on the wrong end


 


New approach graft, Excel


 


 

Your multiply grafted tree looks really healthy.  It's fascinating to me that you can graft so many varieties (many of which are undoubtedly infected with various forms of fmv/fmd) onto the host tree and there are no obvious signs of fmv.  Do you ever see fmv localized to the scion?  Anyway, this would seem to support the idea that some varieties are fmv resistant.