During this last week in June, I've been trying to catch up with trimming all of the grafts I made back in May. That's when I came across the tree pictured at right. I knew there was a graft buried within that tangle of shoots because I could catch a glimpse of aluminum foil at the center. It was time to start pruning.
On close inspection I found the scion and noted a small shoot growing from the graft (photo at left). Unfortunately, stump sprouts had grown far more vigorously than the graft and were completely shading the scion.
Once I found an actively growing scion, I pruned off all the stump sprouts leaving the scion as the only actively growing shoot on the tree (photo at right). With all the tree's energy now focused on the scion, this new graft should really take off.
I'll need to return to this graft in a couple of weeks to ensure that more stump sprouts don't form. At that time, I'll tie the scion shoot to the training stick and remove the grafting tape from around scion.
