GRAFTING

A Little Magic In The Garden

Main grafting steps: Trimming bark after cutting a branch to be grafted

Next: Budwood inserted into branch

Completed bark graft which has been tied with tape and waxed with grafting wax

A cleft grafted peach seedling being tied with budding tape

Cleft grafts of peach seedlings: completed and tied with budding tape (Left) and after inserting scion wood (Right)

These peach grafts were been successful and have already produced blossoms.

This wild plum tree has now become half peach and half plum

A triple grafted plum showing mature and immature fruit that will ripen at different times

A rare excitement seems to overcome gardeners who catch the ‘Grafting bug’.

Simple Art With Science

The simple art of joining parts of different plants to create a new combination has captured the imagination of many an adventurous gardener. There are important commercial reasons for grafting plants, nurseries specialize and get extremely good at producing certain cropping and ornamental plants. For the home gardener the simple challenge of being able to graft in the backyard, then show off the results to visitors is in itself the buzz they are looking for.

Art and science come together when grafting, what eventually comes out is only limited to one’s imagination.

Expect The Unexpected

Backyard pioneers will attempt strange combinations, sometimes with unexpected results. People once laughed at grafted tomatoes, soon they will be buying grafted cucumbers and melons.

I have always admired the natural propagator who effortlessly cuts perfect scion wood (the new part which is attached to a plant). Watching such people will save much time, and trial and error, when attempting a graft. Learning how to recognize, store and prepare the budwood or material to be used for grafting requires experience. In essence, practice and experience will lead to success in the backyard and there will always be failures along the way. The best amateur propagators I have met often talk about their failures and these lessons are rarely forgotten. A good old friend with an ordinary looking backyard will chat for hours and give a detailed history of each multigrafted tree in his garden. Where the buds were obtained, when the branches were grafted and how they have come along, and what else he has planned for the tree!

Grafting Tools And Methods

A wide range of grafting methods can be found in manuals and on the internet. Getting the information is the easy part.

The grafting tools can also be as simple as a razor blade and some flexible tape for binding the grafted plant.

The best part is to have a go; provided the plants to be experimented on are not damaged beyond repair, little is lost.

Once settled in my hobby farm I hope to enjoy and practice some of these techniques:

T budding , chip budding , whip and tongue and bark grafting. Maybe for some difficult plants an approach graft will work.

An Elderly Man's Grafted Olive

I can’t help but refer to a passage written by a famous Greek writer who recorded a childhood experience while an elderly man grafted olive trees:

A deep pallor spread over the old man’s face. He looked once more at the sun, and his lips trembled again in prayer. ‘I thank Thee that Thou hast given me one more year to graft trees…’

Then, turning to me he said calmly. ‘That’s how it is, my boy. I turn your tree over to you. You must love it as a gift from God…’

There was at that moment and in his face a grave ecstasy which we unconsciously apprehended. What had happened !…

A strip of bark from a stick had been fixed into a wild tree. Nothing else had happened!…

We watched the old man uncertainly, and as though guessing what was on our minds, he turned to me.

‘Press your ear to the trunk of the tree,’ he said to me.

I leaned my head against the tree as he had said. He rested his head near mine and listened. I looked into his troubled eyes.

‘Do you hear anything?’ he whispered from the depths of his trance.

‘Nothing! No, I can hear nothing.’

‘But I hear something…’ he murmured, and a deep joy throbbed in his gentle voice.

‘But I heard!… he repeated.

Then he explained to me that he could hear the sap of the tree from which he had taken the piece of bark, that he could hear it running in the sap of the wild tree, mingling with it, beginning the miracle of transformation.

‘When you have come to love trees, then you will hear it, too,’ he said to me.

‘Will you love them, my boy?’

I promised to…

Source; ILIAS VENEZIS "AEOLIA” 1943