With the help of grafting fruit trees, gardeners can more quickly get fruits of their favorite varieties, increase the winter hardiness of plants intended for warmer regions, and increase the yield of weakly bearing fruit. The best time for vaccinations is spring.
When to plant apricot in spring
You can often find a recommendation in the spring to get vaccinated 2 weeks before the start of the movement of juices in apricot. However, it is unclear how to determine that after 2 weeks the tree will begin to wake up. Especially in regions with different climates, this is not happening at the same time. It will be more correct to focus on weather conditions.
When the thaws begin in March and the air temperature during the day is + 3 ... + 4 ° C for 2-3 days, you can start vaccinations. Small frosts do not affect their survival. The allocation of juice in places of cuts is inevitable, but it will be much less than inoculations made after waking up and the flowering of a tree begins. The abundant secretion of juice complicates the survival of the grafted parts of the plant.
Apricot inoculation with freshly cut cuttings
Apricot inoculated with cuttings harvested in the fall or freshly cut. In autumn, they are harvested after leaf fall and before the onset of frost. They are stored all winter in the refrigerator. You can place them in a cold, but not freezing room. During the winter, you need to monitor the temperature and humidity in places where the cuttings are contained. Ideal indicators for storage are from -2 ° C to 0 ° C ... + 1 ° C and 65-70% humidity.
Apricot cuttings can be harvested in the fall or cut immediately before grafting
These troubles can be avoided if it is possible to cut apricot cuttings in the spring, before the abundant movement of juice begins. If individual buds on a tree begin to wake up, then you need to hurry with the preparation of grafting material and conducting operations. The ideal weather for doing this work is cloudy days with a plus temperature.
Vaccination dates in different regions
In Central Russia and the center, including the Moscow Region and the Nizhny Novgorod Region, at the end of March, usually only warming is planned. Therefore, it is possible to plant apricot in these regions in April, and even in May.
The arrival time of warm days in Belarus is the same as in Central Russia. So, there, too, vaccinations on fruit trees are done in the last decade of April or early May. Ukraine and Dagestan are located to the south. Therefore, in Ukraine vaccinations are given in late March - early April, and in Dagestan - in the last decade of February or early March, depending on the weather. If the procedure did not work out in these areas in the spring, you can postpone it until the end of May - mid-June. But in this case, you need to be sure of the duration of the warm period, otherwise the stalk will not have time to take root.
Before the first leaves bloom, it is recommended to close the grafting site with a transparent plastic bag. This will help maintain air humidity and protect the stalk from possible frost. If the vaccination site is in the sun, then at the time of fusion it must be shaded.
However, one should not forget that the determining moment for vaccination is not the climate of the region as such, but the weather conditions of a particular year. On the same site, the timing of apricot vaccination may vary in different years by 2-3 weeks, sometimes for a whole month.
Video: spring apricot vaccine
Varieties of apricot vaccinations
There are many varieties of vaccinations, but only a few are suitable for apricot. They are carried out at different periods of the growing season of the tree. Copulation and grafting into the split is done only before the movement of the juice begins, and budding and grafting over the cortex is 10-14 days later when, thanks to the movement of the juices, the cortex can be easily separated. Suitable vaccine types for apricot are:
- copulation;
- improved copulation;
- for bark;
- in the cleavage;
- budding.
When copulating and improved copulation, the trunk or rootstock branch and grafted graft have the same diameter.
Improved copulation differs from simple by the presence of reeds
Vaccination for the bark is done on a tree to which another variety is grafted. Part of its bark is bent, a grafted graft is inserted under it.
For the apricot inoculation over the bark, the bark of the tree is bent
When inoculated into a split, a rootstock cut (stump of a trunk or branch) is split and a graft of grafted grade is inserted into it.
A stump can be used for inoculation into a split
When budding on the rootstock bark, a T-shaped incision is made and a kidney is cut into it, cut from another tree with part of the bark.
When budding, the grafted material is taken with the bark
All vaccinations are done only on young trees, which are no more than 10 years old. The younger the plant, the faster the engraftment takes place. The fact that only part of the known grafting methods are used for apricot and limit the age of the grafted trees is explained by the many years of experience of gardening practitioners. Other types of procedures, besides the listed ones, turn out to be short-lived, and on old wood large wounds heal poorly, cuttings are reluctantly take root.
All these operations must be carried out with a sterile, well-sharpened instrument. To make vaccination convenient, use a special knife.
The bone on the vaccination knife is designed to bend the bark
By grafting a stalk of a not very frost-resistant apricot variety on a stock with a higher resistance to cold, a tree is created that winter without damage. By planting cuttings with a different ripening period in the crown, fresh fruits are obtained over a longer period. The cuttings of an abundant fruiting tree, grafted onto a low-yielding scion, will make it possible to collect more fruits.
Vaccinations make it possible to grow apricots on a single tree with different ripening periods. Therefore, the period when you can enjoy fresh fruit will become longer. In order for the vaccine to be successful, it is worth it in the spring.
