INFORMATION ON PLANT GRAFTING TECHNIQUES

It is time for grafting… If we have wild roses, let’s graft them. Let’s try grafting our ever-blooming, shrub, mini-flora and climbing roses which come into multi-coloured flowers with fragrant odour and beautiful appearance, capturing our hearts. We can maximize our roses by plant budding, which is also called “bud grafting”, and applied in two stages as spring grafting and dormant grafting. While the grafting done particularly in May are known as spring grafting the ones done later than May and June are generally called dormant grafting. If we have wild roses in our garden or plant them to be grafted, let’s immediately take our grafting knife and raffia and start to graft our ever-blooming, shrub, mini-flora and climbing roses… If we do not know how to do it, we can have an experienced nursery operator to graft our plants.

If we would like to graft our roses with a shrub rose, we should take the scion bud to be grafted from a shrub rose; for budding a climbing rose, we should do the same and select the scion derived from a climbing rose. Regarding mini-flora roses, the grafting should be made with the scion bud of a mini-flora rose. Grafting of these roses should be performed on the branches which are one meter or one and a half meters above the ground. For instance, we can graft a rootstock with three different colours by grafting three separate branches; one of them with a red rose scion, another one with a white rose scion and the other with the scion taken from a yellow rose.

To graft the roses, firstly, the rose from which we take the scion should be the one which already shed its flowers. Scion buds should be like wheat kernels, which are the most suitable bud eyes. The scions which have dormant or sleeper bud eyes do not take at all and they always remain in same condition in which they were first grafted. We should take all these issues into consideration while grafting. Spring grafting, as it can easily be guessed from its name, after being grafted, scion buds spring and flourish in just ten days. Conversely, dormant grafting includes the grafts which are generally done after June and these grafts frequently do not take in the summer when it is first made but in the following Spring months, March and April. But, dormant grafted ones develop in a healthier way, comparing to those grafted in spring time. The reason behind is that the ones grafted in spring season can not stick to rootstock as needed and they can be easily broken due to blowing winds. However, the same situation is not true for dormant grafting as the scion sticks to its place very well and dresses its wound completely.

Let’s now talk about the type of the rose to be grafted or the one to be made grafted. If we would like our roses to stay long lasting and enduring, the first rose to come into our minds is, with its tile red colour and number 64, Baccara. It is an enduring but odourless rose. Number 127, Carino rose comes second. This rose is pink. Carino is as enduring as Baccara, but it has a little bit odour, comparing to Baccara and its flowering style looks perfect. If we are fond of fragrant roses, the first one in my mind is number 86, Papa Meilland Rose with its good-size flowers, great odour and dark velvet colour. Of course, there are many other fragrant roses, but Papa Meilland’s beauty and odour are incomparable with the others. In addition, we can produce roses with bud sticks; but they never be as long lasting and developing as the grafted ones. Therefore, grafting the plant is always the best.

Hope to meet you again in my following writings. Have good days!

Best Regards,

İbrahim Tınaztepe