Do you ever dream about plump heirloom tomatoes and juicy apples? I’m always so ambitious in my fruit and vegetable plans, but my plants often fall to disease or are just too much work for the amount of food I get from them. When I talked to some farming friends about my gardening woes, they asked if I had ever tried grafting. Grafting—what a revelation! If you want to grow hardy plants or create fun hybrids, this may be the method for you.1
BENEFITS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: Growing fruit and vegetables yourself is great for the environment. Not only does it provide a way for you to connect with nature, it also means that you won’t be supporting pesticide-laden or fertilizer-drenched monocrop farming.
3Cost: Growing your own food can put a significant dent in your grocery bill, but when done properly it should save you money in the long-run. If you grow enough, you can have fresh fruit and vegetables in the summer and fall and freeze and can food for the winter and spring. Howstuffworks.com estimates that, “a well maintained 4-foot by 8-foot garden in a Midwestern climate can produce about $600 in food savings over a single summer”!2
Time and Effort: There are a variety of different grafting methods and some methods take longer than others. In general, it only takes a few minutes to an hour to set the graft, but it will take several months for the tree to heal after it has been grafted. You can also buy pre-grafted plants and bypass the instructions in this guide, but doing so will be more expensive.
Materials:
- An established fruit tree planted in the ground such as an apple or a peach tree.
- Branches from various fruit trees such as peaches, plums, apricots, or pears.
- Grafting wax
- A small hatchet or saw
- A knife
- A hammer
- Garden clippers
- Wire brads
Steps for Grafting:
For your first grafting project I recommend that you start by grafting two already established fruit trees together—a rootstock from one plant and shoots from another plant—rather than plant the seeds of both rootstock and plant varieties for the shoots so the seedling stems are the same diameter and can be matched exactly for the graft.4 This kind of graft if called a “cleft graft.”5
- Find several (at least three) healthy green shoots from fruit trees that you want to graft onto another rootstock.
- Cut the shoots off the trees with a knife or clippers.
- Once you’ve cut off the shoot, use a knife to shape the newly exposed edge into a wedge of about 1½ inches. The wedge is formed by making two cuts on opposite sides of the shoot and slanting them downward to meet at a tip. Keep the bark intact on one side of the shoot and trim the bark away on the wedge sides. (See figure A below).
- Wrap the shoot in a damp towel so that it doesn’t dry out before the graft is complete.
- Now move on to the rootstalk. With a hatchet or saw, cut a branch off of the rootstalk that is close to the trunk, about 2 inches in diameter, and pointing upward.
- Make a vertical slit that is about two inches down into the branch of the rootstalk. (See the slit in figure B below).
- Place the slots into the slit with the trimmed edges facing toward the interior of the tree and with the bark lined up with the exterior of the tree.
- Hammer a wire brad through each shoot and into the rootstalk.
- Pour grafting wax over the top of the rootstalk and grafts to keep them in place. (See figure C below).
- Keep an eye on the grafted branches to make sure that they are taking. After a few months you should be able to tell whether or not your graft was successful.
- In the following year your newly grafted branches may begin to bear fruit!
