The Horticulturist
Talks about propagating.
There’s probably a few of us that have friends or neighbours that have a fruit tree that bears such delicious fruit, that you wanted to go straight to the nursery and buy that particular variety. The problem is that sometimes and often has been the case that they don’t know what the variety of that fruit is. Incase my neighbour had the best plums ever, big, dark, sweet and juicy. The only way to get a tree just like, it is to propagate it. I have in my garden an old heritage apricot tree, it doesn’t have many years left, so I’ll have to propagate it.
There are several ways to propagate plants; Grow from seed, take a cutting, or graft. Of the three, grafting is the fastest, and can save you years in waiting for fruit. Think of grafting as cloning, you’ll get exactly the same fruit on the new tree. Plus there can be some added benefits, you can graft onto a rootstock that has a stronger root system or has better resistance to disease.
On my property I’ve got lots of Cherry plums, and last summer I had a lot of fun bud grafting desert plum varieties and apricots on them. As a result I now have a tree that has three varieties of fruit on it, a Green plum, a delicious deep purple skinned plum (I call Vickies plum, it came from her garden) and an apricot. The previous year I also planted a lot of Blackboy peaches, and grafted onto them, preach varieties I picked up from different peoples gardens. Some of those varieties are Hale haven, preacharine, some nectarine varieties, and also some of my favourite peaches from my own garden.
Learning to bud graft isn’t hard. There are lots of videos on Youtube on how to, or look up most gardening books. I find bud grafting the most successful way to propagate stone fruits, but it can also be used for apples and pears. If you’d like to have a rose plant with many types of different blooms bud grafting can be used on roses.
February is a good time of year to bud graft as most buds will be mature. The buds you select from your scion should be well formed, select buds from new growth that is facing the sun. Remove the leaves and keep the twig well hydrated. When doing the graft, only handle the petiole (the leaf stalk, connecting the leaf to the stem). I usually place the bud in my mouth so as to keep the bud moist while making the graft. I’ve found out the hard way that the plant you are grafting onto should be sheltered from strong winds, when the graft takes and starts to grow, it can be easily be blown off by strong winds. If it can’t be avoided, bud towards the North-West. It will have more chance of survival, buds facing any other direction don’t survive the winds as well. I’ve found colour marking the buds works well as it stands out and you don’t end up pruning them off when it comes time to prune the tree. I buy different-colored electrical tapes for this purpose and have them marked like old transistors, red and blue, green and red etc.
It takes a little patience but the following spring the buds should take and grow your new variety of fruit, and you’ll have a new tree.
Written by William
