My Black Madeira cuttings from 2 different sources arrived today and after reading that grafting maybe a better solution than rooting them I set aside 3 cuttings to graft and the rest to root via the Lasagna method.
From personal experience Black Madeira's take forever to root.
For rootstock I used last year's Gillette and Desert King Cuttings that were started in July of 2015. In all I had 11 rootstock to work with. In total I grafted 12 BMs. I grafted a BM onto an MVSB the day before as practice before making the video for youtube.
I used single nodes and a simple cleft graft to graft all 12. All the grafts were wrapped in parafilm, then tightened with garden ribbon, and kept humid with saran wrap.
It took about 2 hrs to get them all done but it'll be worth it if I get just 25% success. The worse that could happen is that the graft doesn't take and the root stock will grow back it's leaves.
Equipment needed:
Grafting Knife - Kershaw Corral Creek Knife with Sheeps foot blade
Parafilm - Nursery Tape
Saran Wrap
Pruners
The grafted plants all went back into my windowed garage where the humidity stays constantly high because of the heated fish tanks in there.
I hope you find this useful.
Update: 2/29/16
I grafted 1 more Black Madeira node from Cindy on the forums to a Desert King Rootstock and a Saccoro Black to a Desert King Rootstock.
(Dont be jealous of the stack of Girl Scouts cookies in the background)
This time I snipped a finger off of the rubber glove to cover the grafted union.
Update: 3/5/16
Showing signs of life. There's a tiny bud popping out on the left side of the Black Madeira scion about 10 days later.
Update: 4/14/16
A few of the grafts are making some great progress.
update: 4/27/16
Update: June 2016
Hi Ben. Hope this is the right way to contact you.
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