Everhard navel orange before grafting.
In addition to top-working my lemon tree, I also grafted several different varieties onto my other trees. I've had an Everhard navel orange in a large pot by the rain tank for awhile, and it fruited last year. The oranges were Ok, but not spectacular. They pretty much tasted like your standard supermarket orange, so I decided add some more flavorful blood oranges.
The bark was slipping well, so I added Ruby, Moro, and Tarocco blood oranges using Joe Real's citrus bark graft. I left one small branch of the Everhard navel, but if I can ever get a sanguinelli blood orange budstick, I'll probably add it and remove the Everhard entirely. If you've never tasted a blood orange, you need to. To me they taste like an mixture of citrus and red wine. I'm told that they don't develop their distinctive 'blood' pigmentation in Houston, but that doesn't affect their flavor.There's debate among the local citrus gurus as to which is the best, with John Panzarella (Lake Jackson) preferring the Tarocco, Mr. Texas (Beaumont) preferring the Sanguinelli, and many Houstonians preferring the Moro.
I also ordered Minneola tangelo and Chandler pummelo budwood. I added the Minneola tanglo to my Orlando tangelo and Wekiwa tangelo trees, and the Chanlder pummelo to my sad looking Sarawak pummelo tree. The bark of the Sarawak tree split during this last really hard freeze, and I'm worried they tree may not survive. The bark of these trees weren't slipping because they're on trifoliate rootstock, so I used the cleft graft to attach the scions.
I had a lot of little pieces of budsticks leftover after all the bark and cleft grafting. They were too small to use, so I decided to trim the buds and practice t-budding. T-budding is where you cut an upside-down "T" into the stock, lift the bark, and insert a bud. The practice stock I chose was only half-slipping, so it may not work. But it was still good to practice making the cut and trimming and inserting the bud. I'll let you know if they all take. I did learn that it's very difficult to keep everything straight when you're t-budding 6-7 kinds of citrus onto one stock! I'm not sure I know what is what. I guess I'll find out when it fruits.
The bark was slipping well, so I added Ruby, Moro, and Tarocco blood oranges using Joe Real's citrus bark graft. I left one small branch of the Everhard navel, but if I can ever get a sanguinelli blood orange budstick, I'll probably add it and remove the Everhard entirely. If you've never tasted a blood orange, you need to. To me they taste like an mixture of citrus and red wine. I'm told that they don't develop their distinctive 'blood' pigmentation in Houston, but that doesn't affect their flavor.There's debate among the local citrus gurus as to which is the best, with John Panzarella (Lake Jackson) preferring the Tarocco, Mr. Texas (Beaumont) preferring the Sanguinelli, and many Houstonians preferring the Moro.
I also ordered Minneola tangelo and Chandler pummelo budwood. I added the Minneola tanglo to my Orlando tangelo and Wekiwa tangelo trees, and the Chanlder pummelo to my sad looking Sarawak pummelo tree. The bark of the Sarawak tree split during this last really hard freeze, and I'm worried they tree may not survive. The bark of these trees weren't slipping because they're on trifoliate rootstock, so I used the cleft graft to attach the scions.
I had a lot of little pieces of budsticks leftover after all the bark and cleft grafting. They were too small to use, so I decided to trim the buds and practice t-budding. T-budding is where you cut an upside-down "T" into the stock, lift the bark, and insert a bud. The practice stock I chose was only half-slipping, so it may not work. But it was still good to practice making the cut and trimming and inserting the bud. I'll let you know if they all take. I did learn that it's very difficult to keep everything straight when you're t-budding 6-7 kinds of citrus onto one stock! I'm not sure I know what is what. I guess I'll find out when it fruits.
Everhard navel orange top-worked with Ruby, Tarocco, and Moro blood oranges.
Cleft graft of Minneola tangelo onto Wekiwa tangelo.
After dark grafting set-up.
Cut and upside-down 'T' into the stock.
Kinnow mandarin bud trimmed from budstick.
Bud inserted into stock and wrapped with parafilm.
