Lately I’ve been growing a Japanese maple tree. It’s about 4 feet tall (5 with the pot). It’s your standard green leaf variety. I bought it locally for twenty something dollars. I’ve only had it for a couple of months, but it’s doing very well. We have a sunroom in the apartment, so I’ve been successful thus far in tricking all of my plants that it’s still the growing season. This plant is, I think, the second plant I’ve bought since I moved here.
Anyway, I’ve spent some time reading about grafting. This is probably due to the fact that I was looking into plant propagation in general, and I thought it would be really great if I could clone my maple. I do have 6 cuttings of my Japanese maple; so we’ll see how those turn out. Rooting trees is very slow-going. So I tried to sharpen up my concepts of grafting and how it works. It was actually a new discovery for me. You can actually attach similar trees together to form a new tree. So, you could select a proper rootstock and make a few grafts and eventually grow a tree that has lemons, limes, and oranges. I would love to make a tree like that someday.
Recently I got a small twig from a beautiful red laceleaf tree. I was really excited, but I was also nervous because I have never grafted a tree before. I need lots of opportunities to practice grafting, so this was my first chance. Grafting is a difficult skilled task. The main reason that it’s so hard is because you have to match up specific parts of the two trees’ tissue. It’s one of the outermost layers, called the cambium. As I understand it, the cambium layer produces new growth and helps relocate nutrients. A common graft to use with Japanese maples involves slicing back part of the soft green trunk of your rootstock, the adult tree hosting the graft, and inserting the tissue of the scion to be grafted in the cut. The piece of tree that you want to graft is cut into a wedge shape so that it fits snugly. First of all, when performing this type of graft, you have to match up the cambium layers of the two trees so that they may exchange nutrients. If this isn’t done correctly, the grafted scion will quickly dry up and die. Now imagine this thin cylindrical layer in the tree. When you make a cut in the main trunk, you will most definitely cut deeper than the cambium layer. So you have this portion of exposed tree tissue, and a ring of the outer-ish part is what needs to be in contact with your little twig. Like I said, the scion end to be grafted is cut into a wedge shape. This needs precision because you need to expose as much cambium as you can. Obviously the wedge and the cut in the trunk need to be the same size. Now aesthetically thinking, you’d assume to stick the scion parallel to the trunk so that it is pointing upward. But if you imagine those two layers that need to connect, this position would only allow up to two points of contact. So scions are positioned at an angle across the cut. This allows four points of contact, ideally. After everything is positioned as you want it, you have to secure everything in place. If the pieces are large, a small nail or two can be used as part of that process. You can use electrical tape, rubber strips, wax, etc. I cut a rubber band and wrapped it tightly around the graft point of contact. Then I covered the rubber with clear tape to help prevent moisture loss. Finally I got a plastic grocery bag and sprayed the inside with a mild fungicide. I covered the entire graft with this bag and tied it snuggly to the trunk of the host tree. Because my tree stays in the sunroom, I was worried about the inside of the bag getting too hot. So, I cut a tiny hole in the bag and pulled it down over the scion. Finally, I taped the hole closed. I’m hoping that my setup minimizes the water loss at the junction. If everything went well I should see signs of unification in 4 to 8 weeks. I just did this a day or two ago, so it’ll be sometime in November or December. I have some pictures of the tree after everything took place. Thanks to the plastic bag, most of the interesting parts are covered. I may take a picture of the actual graft in the future. I must admit. I’m pretty anxious about the graft. I hope it’s successful. 56 days is a long time to cross your fingers.
On a side note, I think it would be really cool to attract readers interested in trading plants, seeds, cuttings, etc. If it grows, and it’s a cool plant, and you can clone it (huge plus!) then that turns out to be new free plants for everybody. How could you pass that up?
