Seeing as this blog is called “The Garden Professors” it has been far too long since we’ve given you a lecture on a useful practice for your garden, so this week I thought I’d give you a little how-to demonstration on something called approach grafting. Approach grafting is a technique that you could use to graft a tomato to a tomato (good if you want to use a disease resistant root with a non-disease resistant top — common in heirloom tomatoes), a tomato stem to a potato root (just a fun project), or an eggplant root to a tomato shoot (good for wet locations).… Continue reading this article “The Approach Graft”
Tag: grafting
A Dangerous Game
Every once in awhile I become infatuated with some idea and can’t stop for looking for information on it. It usually starts when I want to find a good quote for a particular article or column that I’m writing and then ends up swallowing two or three days. Well, it happened to me again yesterday and spilled over into today. I’m currently finishing up a project with an old friend of mine from college who happens to be a political science professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. … Continue reading this article “A Dangerous Game”
Age
This time of year is very exciting for the students in my plant propagation class because now is when they all get to try grafting. In particular, they get to place buds from an apple tree onto a rootstock. There is nothing like placing a bud from one tree onto another to make a person feel as though they’re a horticulturist (NOT HorticulturALIST — that’s not a real word). Especially if that bud successfully grows on the plant where it was placed and produces a happy new tree — What a warm fuzzy feeling!… Continue reading this article “Age”
Why I dislike rootgrafted plants
I’m pretty much a live-and-let-live person in terms of plant choices (as long as they’re not invasive). But I’m becoming convinced that oddities grafted onto hardy rootstocks are poor choices, because the rootstock always seems to win. I posted one of these several months ago (see October 28, 2009 ), but just today have just found the poster tree for my anti-rootgraft movement.
A little backstory. I’m currently out at the Washington coast, trying to get some writing and seminars done without disruption. … Continue reading this article “Why I dislike rootgrafted plants”
Graft and corruption
It’s election season – but that’s not why I’m doing a blog on “graft and corruption.” Instead, let me back up and explain that today I gave a seminar on diagnosing urban tree death. One of my points to the group was the importance of knowing the history of a site – what species were selected, how trees were planted, whether there had been any major construction activity, etc. I thought I’d continue the importance of site history into today’s posting.… Continue reading this article “Graft and corruption”