[conspire] Frankensteining a citrus (was: Risks of automation)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> From fruit growers email:
> 
> If you can find a citrus already grafted by a nursery at an acceptable
> price, then buy it.  
> 
> That said, I am hoping to graft some less common varieties that a
> recommended by home growers.  If all goes to plan, around the time of
> the next CABAL, I should have some buds of mandarins and pommelos.  If
> you want an "experiment" leave the newly purchased calamansi in its
> pot.  We can attempt grafting to the established root stock. If the
> graft takes, you can look for a different spot for the calamansi,
> maybe somewhere with more sun?

Yes, I'll be delighted to accept your kind offer.  If you feel like
arriving before 4pm on Saturday, Sept. 8th, we can sod around doing some
plant-hacking.  (I've never done grafting, so it'd be more like me as
Igor to your Dr. Frankenstein.)

To catch up those not present yesterday:  One of the things we did was
walk down and look closely at the stricken calamansi tree.  Paul pointed
out the existing graft, which (sadly) is _above_ where the brand-new
shoot is.  He says its common for citrus trees to have a high-up graft
like that (5-6" off the ground), unlike what's generally the case.
_So_, the shoot is root stock, not calamansi -- and we're back to my
earlier conclusion that the calamansi itself is a goner.  Paul's advice
at the time was to just dig up the rootstock and start over.  The above
amounts to Paul's 'take 2' thoughts.

Cheryl's present opinion is that we should see what sort of citrus the
rootstock would become.  This would probably take a few years.  IMO,
this would be a poor bet.  We have absolutely no idea what of
innumerable citrus species this is, and I have low confidence of it
turning out to be desirable.

Another is what you say, reusing the robust rootstock for a bud-grafted
scion, taken from either the calamansi tree currently on sale at OSH in
Redwood City or one of my existing citrus trees.  So, yay, mandarins and
pomelos, then.

I'm undecided about whether to buy that new calamansi tree, but I'll do
a site survey before deciding.