All About Grafting - an historic form of propagation

Lee Senior explains the top technique for gaining increased vigour, disease resistance, yield and speed

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Several decades ago, I remember as a horticultural student being shown grafted plants for the first time in a nursery field. At that time grafted plants were quite unlike anything I’d seen before with two plants basically joined together! How could this be?

We were shown and subsequently had a go at something that to this day remains one of the more intriguing horticultural techniques.

Inevitably over time, the use of broader grafting techniques has increased to the point where in many cases it is now the expected normal with a lot of plant nursery stock. These days it is quite unusual to buy a fruit tree that hasn’t been grafted by the nursery.

Grafting in its simplest form is a historic, time-served and rather skilful form of propagation- and there are many forms of it. There is no doubt it is a satisfying but challenging way to increase stock where other methods are not effective.

Grafting manipulates nature in a positive, well-intentioned way. It is a technique used to create new 'super' plants that will (it is hoped) outperform other non-grafted plants. There are plenty of things that can and do go wrong but commercially success rates are very good these days.

Meanwhile, whip and tongue grafting (a technique often used for fruit trees) is probably the one many of us are most familiar with.

In both cases the top half of the graft is the plant that grows in a normal way and is called a scion.

During splice grafting the scion is typically around 1-2 years old, pencil thick and should be cut to a length of 8-10 inches. The scion is then inserted into a cut made into the rootstock to match.

For the graft to be successful the scion needs to knit or 'fuse' with a different rootstock which has to be compatible with. The scion and rootstock need to be in tight contact with each other until they fuse or marry together. To achieve this a number of aides can be used such as tapes, bands, clips, seals and even wax!