Have you tried growing your peaches from seed to maturity without grafting? A lot of people don't realise that peaches and nectarines mostly grow true from seed, and in my experience they can sometimes fruit earlier because you don't need to wait for a graft to first take, and then to grow out. Plums on the other hand don't tend to grow true from seed and I graft my favourite varieties onto peach seedlings.
Absolutely! I've actually got about 20 more of these "rootstock" red leaf indian peach trees that I planted out last year. After going through a second winter, even more of them popped up so I grabbed them for this project since they are really hardy and grow well here. At least a majority of them should come out true though I do have 4 different peach and 3 different nectarine varieties growing one after the other in the orchard, so some may be unique. Unfortunately I'm in zone 5 (don't we all wish we were in a slightly warmer zone?) so two years ago winter got cold enough to kill the 5th peach tree that was here and the fruit buds on the other 4, and the nectarines. This year, we had a night hit 24 or 25 degrees while all of them were in full bloom so we only had a literal handful of peaches make it through that. I only got to eat the one Fingerlakes Super Hardy, but it was delicious, and didn't attract any Japanese Beetles since it ripens late enough to evade them. So in my really specific case, grafting should save me some time! But I definitely plan to collect seeds from them next year if we finally get a good crop!
For this type of grafting, the idea is to let the bud graft heal in while the rest of the tree is growing. Then in the spring cut off the growth above the graft so that it takes over as the leader for the tree. Check out the other peach grafting videos on my playlist for updates on how it all turned out!
I have not tried removing the wood from a chip yet, but I imagine that could yield even better success rates. I'll have to give it a try! All of my freshly grafted trees were closely planted in a raised bed that gets full sun. Since they are tightly spaced I imagine they shade each other more than if they were on their own. I recommend keeping the mid day sun off of the graft if possible, but using something like parafilm to hold in moisture should be sufficient protection.
You should be fairly safe with those dates! I generally don't graft until I can see some buds at least breaking dormancy in the spring - that's when I'll graft things like apples and pears. For peaches and other stone fruit, I prefer to wait a while longer, when the daytime temperatures are at least above 60.
Based on other comments you left, I think you found the update videos! :) The latest I put out at the end of last year's growing season: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3ZhMs3XFb10.html
