Plant Propagation

Chapter 13 - Techniques of Grafting (Chapter 12 in the 7th and 8th editions of the textbook)

In the second sentence of the first paragraph in the textbook you will read that there are somewhere in the vicinity of forty distinct, named types of grafts. In reality, assuming you're skilled with a sharp knife and can adequately meet the physical and physiological requirements of a viable graft union, the only limitation to grafting is your imagination (see the video clips featuring SU art professor Sam Van Aken's "Tree of Forty Fruit" project at the bottom of this page. Also, click here to go to a written description of this effort which includes a graphic of the different types of fruits he has managed to graft onto a single rootstock. While he originally relied on a modified cleft graft for most of his early trees, he now uses mostly chip budding - which we'll learn about in the next chapter.).

Speaking of creative grafting techniques, Vern Coffey, a MS student in ESF's American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project introduced members of the Spring 2016 iteration of this course to "Inverted Root Radical," "Cut Nut," and "Hypocotyl" grafting techniques as part of his graduate student capstone project in this class.

Before reading this chapter, I suggest you spend a few minutes reviewing the Graft Types table (Table 12-1 in the 7th and 8th editions of the textbook and Table 13-1 in the 9th edition). I think you'll find it helpful as you consider the relationships among the various types of grafts covered in this chapter. From a commercial perspective, the "whip and tongue" graft is by far the most common technique used in fruit tree propagation. Meanwhile, the "side-veneer" graft is widely used to propagate hard-to-root ornamental conifers and Japanese maples. And, the "splice" and "cleft" grafts are used to propagate tomatoes and other grafted vegetables.

(Reminder - because of the shifting of chapters in the new, 9th edition of the text book, the introduction screens for each of the videos below will reference "Chapter 12" - not Chapter 13.)