And this is the UF plum variety I grafted last year:

Yes! It has ACTUAL PLUMS on it!

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that these experiments are working so wonderfully.

Lots of folks have wild plums growing in their yards. If they use those plums as root stocks, they’ve got a hardy resource already in place and can create some amazing fruit cocktail trees that will handle tough conditions without breaking a sweat. Not that trees sweat. Well, they do release moisture into the air via a process called…

Oh, nevermind.

Anyhow, I’m stoked. My little Chickasaw plum is well on its way to being a one-stop stone fruit destination. It’s amazing how well the new grafts are doing. The best takes appear to be the “whip and tongue” grafts.

Next year I hope to add a few more varieties of plum to the mix. The only failures we had this year were the sweet cherry scions. None of those took on the Chickasaw – and they also failed on my wild black cherry tree. It was worth a shot, but that shot was a blank.

As a recap, this is what has worked for us this year:

Nectarine grafts onto Chickasaw plum
Peach grafts onto Chickasaw plum
Improved plums graft onto Chickasaw plum
Black mulberry onto black mulberry
Orient pear onto Kieffer pear
Thanksgiving pear onto Kieffer pear
Various apple onto apple
Peach onto Bruce plum
Nectarine onto seedling peach

Too soon to tell:

Texas Everbearing fig onto unknown yellow fig
Black mulberry onto paper mulberry
Pear onto wild hawthorn

Failed:

Brown turkey fig onto black mulberry
Minnie Royal cherry onto wild black cherry
Minnie Royal cherry onto Chickasaw plum
Long mulberry onto black mulberry

This has been a lot of fun so far… can’t wait until next February when we go at it again!