so today we went out in the woods you know wherever our favorite trees are we collected the sign would off of them using the pole pruners Clippers whatever means necessary to get up there and the tree and get them out we cut them into small enough pieces to fit into these quart size ziplock bags freezer bags I use one bag if I'm using storage tight bags I usually double them up and a bigger bag make sure they're labeled rubber-banded tied up nicely and then then all you've got to do is put them in the crisper box some people say to add the moist paper towel I usually do the key if you do that as you need to check them from mold occasionally or make sure they're not too wet if they're too wet you can just kind of open the bag in the fridge and let them air out for a day or two and then close it back up that's it I'm gonna put them in the crisper box until grass today okay so we're out here this is our first day of graft in this spring its middle April we've shown you already how to collect the scions out of your your favorite tree that produces a lot of fruit okay so now the bark is slipping the buds are breaking leaves are coming out and it's time to start grafting so we're gonna do the most simple graft and it's the one that I use the most often it's called the bark graft really all you need is some kind of saw to cut the tree off like that you you need a grafting knife some people use just a basic knife I've got a Swiss Army grafting knife here's a regular knife you're not making a whole lot of precise cut so it's not that big of a deal to get all fancy some people use these retractable you know box cutter type knives no big deal the the tape you use to tie the graft off I use simple flagging tape I also use grafting tape people also use this to stake a tree tied around the tree and a stake to hold it upright you use some type of sealant to seal the graft off I'm going to experiment with this with this caulk I've been using a type of wood glue that they don't make anymore so I've got to find something else some people use tolet Bowl wax some people use that asphalt type pruning sealer that black stuff lots of things work the key is you know you want to seal the moisture off you don't want it to dry off okay like I said earlier this tree has has sprung out for the year you know it's the sap is flowing the buds are starting to get bigger and become leaves that's real important so you start with your dormant scions I hate that word start with your dormant scions you got out of the fridge and they're still dormant this is not dormant anymore it's starting to grow that's important all right now we're just going to cut this thing off so this is your route stop this is a BART graft again you just make a straight up-and-down cut you're not really cutting you're just pushing it into the bark you're not doing any slicing and then you just you use your knife to kind of pry the bark back it you'll kind of hear it pop and you're separating the bark from the wood inside here is called the cambium layer that's the most important you want the cambium of your rootstock to touch the cambium of your scions we're going to just make a a long v cut so we're gonna have a cut on this side and a cut on the exact opposite side and you cut it down pretty thin if you mess up it's fine you can just make your scion a little bit shorter it really doesn't have to be perfect for bark grafting okay that's good enough all right we're gonna slide this yeah use my knife to pry it back open okay there's people that can do that a lot better than me but works just fine I'm gonna make another cut and put another Sion in okay you see how that's peeled back it just pops off easily because the bark is slipping this this bud right here is kind of in the way I want to make a bigger cut so I'm just going to take that off there's people out there that are way better at this than me that can just make one cut there and one cut there and it's perfect the key point is it really doesn't matter it's this easy okay okay so I'm going to pry that open and slide my Sai on there okay so what you've got here is cambium of your rootstock now cut touching cambium on two sides of your Scion we need to wrap this guy up now I'm gonna use some simple flagging tape that you that you can get at the co-op all you do to get it started as you wrap it around and overlap it and eventually it'll catch get it really tight especially up top where your Saiyans are and then you just do a simple half hitch to tie it off kind of your hand like that to get it good and tight and then you're good you can use an exterior type you know waterproof wood glue unfortunately they don't make this one anymore but if you can find it and grab it I'm sure you've got it really good around each of your Saiyans so no air can get into that crack cut and you're good to go some people will wrap aluminum foil around this to keep the Sun off do all kinds of crazy things I've never noticed it any difference like I said I get 90 95 percent success this is my third year of doing it it's it's it's this easy it normally doesn't require all of that and that's it let's go to the next tree