Grafting
I went to a grafting workshop this weekend. Handily I still have all my fingers intact! It is most definitely a skill that comes with billions of grafts worth of practice. I made my cuts as instructed, and I guess if it had been the right time of year for the avocados we were practicing on, I may have had a chance with my top graft. Maybe. Up until the point I started hacking away at my rootstock trying to practice a side graft…
Grafting is a process that takes the bottom of one plant (or rootstock) and attaches the top of another plant in order to create a Frankenstein plant that has the desired fruit or flowers, attached to more hardy roots that will cope with your soil conditions. Or sometimes, to create a plant that is a more dwarf variety. Note I say ‘more dwarf’ - dwarf varieties can still grow quite large if you let them! Or you can create a true Frankenstein plant and graft multiple types of fruit onto the one tree - so you have a tree that bears limes and lemons and oranges. Or peaches and nectarines. Or four varieties of apples.
The graft (not by me!) on my yuzu. Look at the thorns on the yuzu part!
The top piece of the plant in the grafting process is called a scion. This is usually the tip of a branch that has hardened off, about pencil thickness and 10-15cm long. Sometimes you can get away with just a bud: the growing bud is shaved off and jammed into the rootstock, giving you a lot of growing material from your desired plant! Bud grafts are a typical method used by rose grafters.
The general process involves matching the cambium of both the rootstock and the scion and holding them tightly together so they eventually grow into one. The cambium layer is just under the bark of the tree and is where the cells are actively dividing and creating new tissue so it’s the perfect part to join to another.
Mostly, only plants in the same genus graft well, although there are exceptions and sometimes plants can be grafted that are in the same family. Grafting citrus is common place, all of them are in the Citrus genus. Peaches and nectarines are in the same genus (Prunus) and can be grafted onto an almond rootstock - also in the same genus. There has also been success with grafting Neem trees (Azadirachta indica) onto white cedar (Melia azedarach) - different genus but the same family (Meliaceae).
A weird graft that only really exists for novelty purposes is tomatoes on potatoes. Both are part of the Solanum genus and you can harvest your spuds and the sauce to go with it! Personally I have better things to do with my time than fiddly grafts on soft tissue annual plants, but hey, whatever floats your boat!