Removing vinyl electric tape from grafts

I can do them about as fast as I splice graft. It does slow me down to have to open up the bark and place the bud in there. And I take a bit extra time to get the wood out from the backside of the bud, but like anything, it gets faster with practice. The wrapping is pretty easy, as once the bud is in the little pocket, it doesn’t go anywhere.

I’ve read before that a team of two professional budders can field bud 1000 trees/day. I’m no where near that fast.

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I just use a single blade razor and make one long cut all the way along the bottom of the branch- cutting completely through the tape but into the branch as little as possible. Takes half a second. The tape works it’s way off slowly over time, and continues to provide decent protection for a while after it’s cut. I can see a thin scar in the branch if I look for it once the tape falls off, but it’s barely there. The razor makes such a clean cut that it seems to heal right away. Can cut maybe 20 branches cleanly before I need to flip the razor to the other side.

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Here’s a pic of one of my pear grafts from mid-February the tape is already coming off by itself. I’m sure all the rain we’ve had recently has helped it along…

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Glad we are not in professional competition with them.

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I just read two days ago about wrapping tape, like electrician tape, too tight; so I lightened up a bit yesterday. Then later, I checked on my old ‘rescue’ apple tree and noticed that most of the new shoots were very vigorous but last year’s grafts were not. I had used the green garden tape and tied them up tight…too tight, I found out. I cut the tape off and sho’nuff they were squeezed up corset-like in the middle. I saw a roll of that green stuff not long ago that said it wouldn’t do that, but my roll from two years ago did not say that. Maybe they’ve changed their ways. I gotta say, one layer may have been OK, but that’s not what I did.

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Seedy,
I wrapped my green garden tape tightly, too. However, I cut it off after the graft took. I go around in late summer cutting the tape off. If you leave it too long, it will girdle the graft.

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I didn’t get girdling but I did get warty excrescence below the graft under the tape

I volunteer to have the competition at my orchard and will volunteer all scions and rootstocks lol! I’m pretty slow at field grafting, it took me over a month in my spare time to do around 600 grafts last year. This year I’m running way behind and hope to catch up soon.

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That’s the answer…go back and cut it off. Fortunately, I do have parafilm under everything. A few of my grafts were way up in the branches…I threw a rope over the branch and would pull it down and stick a few scions on it and let it back up. No bird-sitting or deer-munching problems, but I gotta do the same to remove the green/black tape. My current work is all at normal height, so far.

I always wrap my grafts with ax tape first and then put electrical tape over that. Never have that problem off pulling the bark off.

But it’s one more step, and I’ve never killed a graft by accidentally removing the outer bark. It seems to only be a problem when bark is slipping, when I remove tape in early spring it usually comes unravels without damaging the bark, but as I said, the damage has yet to be lethal- HERE. Under harsher suns results may vary.