For a number of years I have put on a grafting workshop in early May. We are in zone 5. At this time buds will be swelling but not yet broken. Why this choice of time? Because the afternoon is spent in my orchard top-working trees, and I have found that this is most successful around the time of bud swell. (Any wise comments?)
What I would like advice upon, however, is how best to arrange the morning session, which is devoted largely to basic whip-and-tongue grafting of bare-root rootstocks. What I have done in the past is to keep the rootstocks dormant up to the day of the workshop, graft them in the workshop, and send the participants home with instructions to plant their new babies in their permanent locations as soon as possible. Results have been variable, ranging from 100% take and growth to complete failure of both grafts. (They get to take home two trees). Difficult to separate grafting technique from after-care.
My questions are 1) Do you think I would be better heeling in my rootstocks in a nursery bed a few weeks ahead of the workshop and allowing them to break dormancy? (ie. graft onto actively growing rootstocks)
2) Should I be advising those participants with space to plant the newly grafted trees in a nursery bed for a year (or two?) before moving them to their permanent location? (I appreciate that this is "standard practice", but it is not clear to me just why. It seems to me that disrupting the new root system by digging it up a year later cannot be beneficial either to the tree, nor to its local biome.)
What do those of you running spring grafting workshops do?
Broomholm OrchardZone 5b in Nova Scotia