Grafting

“Graft” is defined as follows: “a scion of a plant inserted in a groove, slit, or the like in a stem or stock of another plant in which it continues to grow.” Ok…so what is a scion and why would anyone want to graft in the first place?

 Why Graft

Let’s pretend that you want to grow a mango tree in your yard and there is only room for one! If you plant a seed, that seed-grown tree will take 7+ years (sometimes 15 or more!) to produce fruit. Once it finally produces fruit, the quality (in most cases) will be a product of random pollination, and the fruit that it produces will be of random quality. It could be delicious, or quite poor. A breeding project conducted by one of Florida’s premier mango growers (Gary Zill) saw 1,000 trees planted on 5 acres, and only about 30 varieties were selected to be propagated and sold to fruit tree nurseries, so the chances of getting a top tier quality fruit from seed grown trees are low. So what should one do if they want to plant a mango tree in their yard? Buy a grafted tree! Not only will you get fruit faster (about 2 years after planting in the ground), but you will know with certainty the variety of mango the tree will produce.

There are three main reasons for grafting, they are:

  1. To creates clones

  2. To produce fruit quicker

  3. To make Hardier plants

 How to Graft

First, lets cover the terms:

Rootstock - a seed grown tree, preferably a vigorous one.

Scion - a branch harvested from a mature (already producing fruit) tree of known fruit quality and or tree attributes (like production or disease resistance).

Cambium - a thin layer just below the bark. When grafting, the cambium layers of the rootstock and scion must make contact for a successful graft.

Cleft Graft -

Veneer Graft -

Now, lets talk about the tools one needs:

  • Grafting knife

  • Grafting tape

  • Rubber bands

And finally, the process of grafting:

  1. Grow a rootstock to a suitable size for grafting. As a general rule, a rootstock which is pencil thick will suffice for most grafting operations, though they can be smaller.

  2. Obtain scion wood from a trustworthy source. Compare the scion width to the rootstock width and determine which style of graft is best. At Real Sweet Farms, we mainly operate with 2 types of grafts: Cleft or side cleft, and occasionally veneer.

    • For cleft grafts, the width of the scion should match closely with the rootstock.

    • For side cleft grafts, it is not important for the widths of the scion and roostock to match.

    • We use a veneer graft when the roostock is much larger than the scion and when grafting to woody roostocks (as opposed to green/young wood with cleft grafts).