I made this practice whip-tongue graft on a ficus benjamima tree back in Oct 2016. It was secured with rubber bands and wrapped with parafilm. I angled the two pieces slightly to hopefully get some cambium crossing. The rootstock branch eventually died so unable to know if this graft would have worked. The pics now show it dried out, but do you see any obvious flaws in the fit that would make it unlikely to have worked on a fig tree? I'm going to start my real grafting next week and hope to learn something from this one.

 
another view of it
 

 

Here's a rind bark graft on that ficus tree done at same time that took

You are better than me at the whip but that being said...... when you push them together the leading edge on both scoin and root stock should fall together. There should be no visible cut showing when done like BRACKISHFIGGER. the king of all grafting. Lol. I had a personal lesson from him that didnt take. I need to get some cuttings and practice.
Look up frankenfig. ir member BRACKISHFIGGER. His pist will show you a whole lot.

Excuse me Cjccmc, but the plant on the photo is definitely not a Ficus, looks like a Ligustrum, or maybe an Eugenia myrtifolia, but not a Ficus beniamina nor another Ficus.

Hello

Here you have a good description and guidelines for all sorts of grafts
http://dept.ca.uky.edu/PLS440/lectures/grafting/graftingfactors.pdf

Your whip&tong -for some reason- did not establish sufficient callus in due time
Assuming no discrepancies on the type/species of tree,..

The pics lead me to believe that the contact surfaces where not exactly flat, allowing for
air gaps. May be there were not enough tying up pressure

May the sap pressure did originate some partial flooding aborting the exercise

For W&T timing was not probably ideal

Whip & tongue , Cleft, Saddle, Triangle, graft types, ..in my area are done around Jan/February just by the time root stock start to wake up  . Scions cut a month before and kept in the fridge
Sept/October, I would either do a simple patch budding or chip budding and let the budd sleep until following spring.

Francisco
Portugal

Hi Francisco, how are you?

I think that, rather than a technical problem, is a compatibility issue.
Look at the leaves: the arrangement on the stem is opposite, while F. beniamina has alternate leaves, plus F.b. has not reddish new growth like the plant on the photo.

In the graft that has been succesfull the scion is of the same species of the rootstock, while the graft with F.b. scion can't obviously be succesfull because of the incompatibility.

I'm 100% sure that the plant showed is not a Ficus.

Francisco, thanks for the link, there is a lot of good info there.

Fico, you may be correct about the name of the tree, I don't know tree types by sight but a landscaper told me it was a FB so I just went by that. It was a "volunteer" that sprouted without any effort by me. This tree has a very thin cambium and it does not make the milky latex sap that figs do. But root and shoot of above graft are compatible as I cut the shoot from a branch of the tree and grafted it back at the same spot. (Just for practice to improve my skills)

One of my questions about this type of graft: should the two pieces be angled slightly as I did it to make sure the cambiums cross and at least have contact at one point?  Is one point sufficient for a good quality graft? Probably never have cambium shapes that are identical between root and shoot so there seems to be a risk of no contact if they are not angled. True?

to be fair, Ritchie, I only post the photos of the pretty ones!  I've had much uglier than this one take for me. 

The second pic shows that the scion did some healing of the uncovered part of the cut, along with the 3rd pic showing some callous in the actual joint of the rootstock/scion, so I'm betting it started to "take" before the rootstock branch died

Given the graft shown, I would have separated them and lengthened the mid/bisecting cut in the lower half(rootstock?), so that I could shove them together more/deeper.  Very often, there is "extra" sticking out - from either branch - that doesn't mate.  I will usually trim/shave any remaining bark between these interfaces to maximize cambium-on-cambium opportunity.

.

Conrad,

You don't need to angle this type of graft. There are so many possible contacts points that it's difficult that they don't make contact somewhere. Nevertheless, the more contact points the better.

Even if the cuts are not that smooth, if you apply enough pressure you may solve the potential problem of air pockets, Francisco was talking about. I use to tie this graft tightly and cover the whole thing, including the scion buds and tip, with parafilm.

I would try to perfect the end of the bevel cuts, namely making them thinner (like in the following picture - not my picture), http://www.sonneruplund.dk/eng/image/whip1.jpg
so there is not a huge bump between both ends with tends to take much more time to heal and doesn't provide any contact points (making that thinner is not this easy when grafting figs, so don't be too perfect).
If you do make them thinner don't exaggerate the center cutting, so that you don't "overstep" the ends. It's better to be short (cambium layer showing at the tip, like in your case, than to place the tip over the bark).

Also, if using this graft in different diameter scions (sometimes that's inevitable), then do angle them a bit, and place the thinner one to one side, don't leave it in the middle as there won't be adequate contact between cambium layers that way.

A few examples. Not all of them need to be perfect, if they are tied tightly. And not all of them need to be long bevel cuts. It really depends on the scion and rootstock branch we have to work with:

 










Also, don't remove the ties too soon (i tend to leave mine for a couple of months), the following one was cut 3 months after the graft:



But beware of fast growing varieties in strong rootstocks.
In this case it's better to cut and retie using rubber ties or else you can have something that looks like this:



This one will recover, but some might be left with very thin and weak spots and might break later

Thanks for the comments brackishfigger.  Since root and scion are never exact match for diameter and shape, what approach do you use to get ensure cambium contact?  Angle the two pieces like I discussed above or something else?

Whip & Tong
How big the cuts in relation to diameter ?
Where to start these cuts ?
How deep should they go..?

Have a look on this page:
http://www.greffer.net/?p=627

Francisco

Jaime, thanks for your posts and recommendations. The whip-tongue grafts have always had poor success for me (0 for 3 tries), that's why I'm asking about so many details since I must be missing something that is critical to success. Your pics show that a lot of variations in cut lengths can work.

Francisco, that's a nice guide for cut sizing.

Great discussion, great information! Thank you all!

here is my current preferred graft for uneven branches with a smaller scion. 

Wrap scion in parafilm.  cut the scion in half longitudinally to a depth of about 1.5 inches, then cut off one half with a 90degree cut.  Cut the remaining half to a flat point/wedge. 

Cut off the end of the rootstock branch, and shave back a thickness that is a hair longer than the 1.5inches.  Ideally, the cambium-to-cambium width/distance will match the scion half, but the relative thicknesses and contours of the branches, as well as a need to shave deep enough to reach wood on the rootstock, may make it impossible.  Just line up one of the sides.

The half-nub sits flush against the cut edge of the rootstock and improves structural support, and once lashed down with rubberbands and parafilm, its quite robust.  I'd expect it to work for more traditional vertical grafting too.

 



 

I lengthened the scion's top/outside cut before lashing.  THe irregular appearance of that cut is due to the contour of the wood, not a "wavy" cut.  The cambium alignment shown here is not the final position.

I grafted three of these on feb 10, and they are all budding out.  Spring is hitting hard here already.

Brackishfigger, I've had very good luck with one similar to what you show. Learned it from HarveyC's video where he calls it "modified rind bark" graft and is the one I showed in last pic of my original post. How long does it take for these small sized scions to produce good figs? Do they take longer to produce than a thick scion grafted with W&T?

Conrad

time to leafing out, and especially fig production, is highly variable.  Most commonly, I get buds pushing within a few weeks and at least a few figs the first year. 

I do not find a trend regarding type of graft and time to production.  If the graft takes, it takes.  Many varieties on my tree have both a W&T on the end of a branch and a chip or two further up-branch.  I do find that the terminal grafts tend to be more vigorous growers, though whether due to the location on the branch, or the fact that it's a W&T instead of the chip, I don't know.  But I suspect it's the location on the branch.

I have had very good success with a variation on the whip and tongue graft as shown in the illustration for #10 above.  It is sort of a symmetric double wedge.  The key to improving my success was to always cross the cambium, preferably with both sides of the cut scion.  Using three  Lowes figs(@$8) and one larger BT that I had, 10 out of 10 grafts took and are growing well.  I am in SW FL where black mold is always a problem, so I wrap only the joint in grafting tape.  Then tightly with the green stretchable garden tape for long term joint support, followed by a rubber band which disintegrates in FL in 2-3 weeks.  The end of the scion gets grafting wax if its a cut end.  No other wrapping in this warm, humid environment.   Sorry, but posting pictures in way beyond my capabilities.
 
I have also been successful using the modified rind graft as illustrated in Harvey's(Figaholics) video. I use a similar wrapping method as described above.

I have had only limited success with a chip grafts.  But I suspect that I can improve my results by being careful to angle the fit to achieve a cambium cross and bind the graft very tightly.

Yesterday was my grafting day. I found out that working with what you have is much different than the concept pictures that show scion as nice straight cylindrical pieces. Also my own ability to make straight flat cuts without breaking the scions was another issue. I wanted to mostly use Rind Bark grafts but ended up having to use cleft for about half due to relative sizes. I'll post results in about 3 weeks.