How are trees grafted?

Some years ago, the soil of France was infested with a pesky insect which fed on the roots of the grape vines. The problem was solved by grafting. The beautiful hybrid tea rose is a result of plant grafting. Our best apples, plums and peaches grow from grafted trees. The trick of grafting is to arrange a merger between two growing plants.

We tend to think that all new plants grow from seeds, but the plant world has many different methods of multiplying, many different ways of growing. If you cut a geranium twig and put it in the soil, it will grow roots and become a new plant, just like the original. In grafting, two plants are made to grow together as one. A well grafted tree has the good qualities of both original plants.

The growing part of a tree is a layer of cells just below the bark. It is called the cambium and year by year the cambium adds rows of new cells around the outside of a treats trunk, branches and twigs. The miracle of grafting begins when we expose the cambium layer on a rooted tree trunk and the cambium layer on a twig from another tree, If the two layers of cambium are held together and sealed from the air, they will grow together.

The rooted tree is called the grafting stock and is usually a young sapling. The trunk is cut off a short distance from the ground. The grafting twig is called the scion and it is taken from a tree with qualities we want to reproduce. There are several methods of slicing and placing the stock and the scion together. A short knife cut can be made down the trunk of the stock and the bark rolled back from both sides. The scion can be sliced with a sloping cut and its cambium placed on the exposed cambium of the stock.

The bark of the stock is then rolled over the scion. When the grafting is sealed with air tight glue, the two will grow together as one tree

In a grafted tree, the roots keep the sane quality as the stock. The trunk which grows from the scion will have the same qualities of a tree from which tho twig    was taken. Though an apple seed will produce a tree, its apples probably will be poor. But a grafted apple tree, using the root system of the sturdy stock, produces apples just like those on the scion tree.

The cutting and placing together of the stock and scion may vary. But for a grafting to succeed, the two layers of cambium must be touching each other and sealed from the air until the merging growth has taken place. Sometimes one scion is used on a root stock, sometimes more. A hybrid rose tree is usually grafted with three scions,