Today I have mostly been .... grafting.

[nickdub]

Had a bit of time today, so thought I'd have a try to see about budding some plums. As it was the bark peeled up easily, and I got a few buds tied in - so for anyone-else who has tree fruit that they'd like to try propagating, even if its only to add another variety for purposes of pollination to an existing tree - now might be an OK time to give this relatively simple process a try.

[Scarlet]

Can you explain for the grapes that haven't a clue on grafting!!! That's me

I'd love a go but not sure where to start.

[nickdub]

The basic idea is simple enough - the main growing part of a tree is the green layer just under the surface of the bark. So you take a piece of growth with this green layer intact from one tree and mate it up with a cut in another tree, so that both parts have their green layers in close contact. If you think of it as a bit like doing a skin graft on a person, that's the mindset.

With budding, which is one option you can try now, you take a leaf bud from a stick cut from this year's growth (the scion) and tie that in to a T shaped cut in the tree you are grafting to (the stock). I use wet raffia for the tying in, then you bandage this area, either with something like cling-film strips or hot wax - the idea being to keep the operated on part of the branch covered so that it does not dry out well healing over.

Its really very simple, but it does require practice and the acceptance that as an amateur a lot of your grafts won't take - I hope that 50% of mine will work, and sometimes they do :-) So all I do is make a lot more grafts than I need.

You-tube is a useful resource for this because a lot of people have put up videos of all sorts of grafting including budding, and as they are experts its good advice to copy how they make their cuts, choose their grafting material etc when you are starting out.


To anyone interested I'd say have a go using grafting wood from any trees you already have which are growing strongly but obviously not on anything which you consider special/irreplaceable - if you don't have many trees of suitable types you could either ask another gardener for some scion wood or just try budding a bit from one tree back to itself, just for a practice run.