Victor Frankenstein should have taken up gardening

Posted by Carol O'Meara, Boulder County Extension

Cue up some Edgar Winter, it’s time celebrate the birthday of one of our most iconic Halloween bad boys: Frankenstein.  Two hundred years ago, Mary Shelly published the story of the reanimated monster that’s shuffled and groaned its way into the pantheon of ghouls that define the season.

Shelley shocked the world with her gothic horror treatise, widely regarded as the first true science fiction novel rather than fantasy, because it drew on scientific concepts of the day.  Pulled together from pieces of cadavers, the monster was reanimated through electricity from lightning.

A sewn-together creation of bits and pieces is nice and all, but gardeners know her tale isn’t as far-fetched as we’re asked to believe.  We’ve been doing this for thousands of years.  We live with creatures grafted together all the time; in fact, we search them out and make them the centerpiece of our landscapes.

Some are subtle; so seamlessly grafted you don’t realize its two different plants put together.  Others show the graft proudly, and gardeners use this to guide them in planting to proper depth.  Grafting provides us with plants that are sturdier, more disease resistant, or smaller than the original.  It’s how we get cultivars of the same fruit on tree after tree in orchards so we can enjoy Honeycrisp apples or Cresthaven peaches. 

In order to make sweet, edible apples one needs to grow the exact cultivar by cloning as grafts on rootstocks. If you try to grow them from seed, you get the result of apple flowers crossing with other, usually crabapples.

It’s also how we have trees sporting several different fruits on the same plant.  Often called “fruit cocktail” or “fruit salad” trees, gardeners with big desires but small space can have it all: with four, five, even six different fruits on a single trunk.  Nectarines, plums, apricots, and peaches or red, green, and yellow apples come together in a fusion of flavor.

Scientists are running wild having successfully grafted fruit trees they’re grafting anything that doesn’t move in the garden: tomatoes, melons, the neighborhood rabbits.  Ok, maybe not the rabbits, but horticulturists are very excited about grafting.

Clones, too, surround us; they give us perfect replicas of plants we covet at other’s homes or businesses. Technically, the definition of plant cloning is human-controlled asexual propagation of a plant, which doesn’t sound fun at all. But we do it all the time.

While Victor Frankenstein raided graveyards for his body bits, we raid plants we see while walking the neighborhood or sitting at the doctor’s office awaiting our turn.  With a quick, surreptitious pinch, we snitch a bit of plant to put in water for rooting, thus cloning the plant.  Love that African violet?  Pinch off a leaf and plant it.  The begonia at an atrium in the mall?  They root nicely from leaves as well (readers: denuding a plant you don’t own is unethical.  Ask permission before taking anything from the plants you see).

When it comes to bringing things back from the dead, gardeners have much in common with Victor; anyone who’s had a jade plant fall and shatter into pieces knows the desire to resurrect it by shoving a bit of stem or leaf into potting mix (the leaves should be dried a bit before doing this, but that’s a different story).  It takes a while for the leaf to root but shocking it with electricity to speed things up would end in disaster.

Ultimately, Victor wasn’t such a bad guy; he simply needed to take up gardening. 

Saliplant- Spanish Seedling Company

By: Sherie Caffey, Horticulture Agent, CSU Extension-Pueblo County

Saliplant delivery truck

After my blog about our Agricultural tour of Spain last winter, I got some feedback that folks wanted to hear about Saliplant, the company that provides the seedlings to Bioprocam and many other growers in the Andalusian region. You asked, so here it is…

Working on the production line

The Saliplant facility we visited was located in the town of Motril, which is in the province of Granada in Southern Spain. They specialize in growing seedling plants for growers, and also in hand grafted seedlings. They employ over 300 workers, most of whom are from the Motril area. They serve over 3,000 customers with their high quality seedling plants. They have growers who buy 500 plants (one tray) at a time, and others that might buy 80,000 plants at once, but the average is around 5,000 plants. Every year they grow about 145 million plants. 12% of those plants are exported to other countries in Europe, but most of them stay home in Spain. They were the first company to produce organic seedlings for commercial growers in 1945.

A stack of trays waiting for plants

The seed planting process is done on a production line system. They have three production lines running during business hours. Each line can crank out 450 trays of seedlings per hour, with each tray having 512 holes. So you don’t have to do the math, Saliplant is planting over 200,000 seeds every hour! Busy place. There's a short video of the production line in action near the end of this blog.

The seed planting machine

The clean, sterilized planting trays come down the line and first get filled with peat. After that the machines stick a label on them that indicates what is planted in them, and the time, date, and production line. They stressed trace ability to us many times. They keep all records for two years, so that if a contaminated product were to come out of their facility, they can trace it back to exactly where it came from and nip it in the bud.

The mini waterfall

Once the trays are labeled, the machines plant the seeds in the holes. If they are planting bean seeds, they have to be planted by hand due to their size and shape. They will grow anything that is requested by a grower, they have even started pistachio plants for someone. When we were there, the line we were watching was planting broccoli seeds. After the seeds are planted, vermiculite is added to the top, and the tray goes through a little waterfall to water the seeds.

This tray is all planted!

The germination rates of their seeds is really good, usually around 95%. They indicated that some seeds have inherently lower germination rates, and that is something that the purchasers have to accept. The growers buying the plants pay Saliplant per hole in the tray. Even if a plant doesn’t grow, they still pay for the hole, so they have to try to do a really good job at getting things to sprout. They also have a 42 acre greenhouse facility where the seedlings go once they germinate.

Seedlings getting big in the greenhouse

The grafting season starts in January, so there wasn’t a whole lot going on while we there. They did have two employees working on grafts, but during peak season they will have 50 grafters working at once. I found it very interesting that they only hire women to do the grafting. They said that the ladies tend to be more detail oriented and do a better job, girl power! They graft tomatoes, melons, eggplants, cucumbers and peppers. They graft the top of a desired variety to a root stock that will either give them better production, or better disease resistance. Most of the employees have a 95% success rate with their grafts. The grafts are money makers for Saliplant. For a normal melon plant, they might get around 2 cents profit, but for a melon grafted onto pumpkin rootstock, it is more around 2 Euros profit.

I hope you have enjoyed another look into the agricultural industries of Southern Spain, and that one day you might experience it firsthand.

After Care of Your Grafted Apple Tree

Posted by: Curtis Utley, Jefferson County Extension

If you are planning on attending my annual Apple Grafting Workshop April 5, 6, 7, or 8 you will produce an apple tree that you can then take home and plant. You may be very nervous about how best to care for the tree you have invested so much time and (possibly) blood into grafting.

If you have not registered yet do so at http://jeffcohort.eventbrite.com

Bench grafted trees are produced in the dormant season so for the tree to survive it will need to break dormancy, reorganize the vascular tissue at the graft union and begin producing leaves to manufacture carbohydrates to perpetuate life. Deciduous trees store carbohydrates in root and stem tissue in the autumn to provide the required energy to break bud and re-leaf the following spring; liken this to fat reserves for the winter survival of a hibernating bear. Dwarfing rootstocks used for grafting ironically do not necessarily have copious amounts of roots and to add insult to injury much of the stem tissue storing carbohydrates is removed when the cuts are made for the graft union. What is left is a tree that has just enough stored energy to break bud and repair the vascular tissues at the graft union once. With this in mind what care should you provide to your new tree?

Marrying scion to rootstock in a whip graft. The ties that bind; rubber.

1.    Plant the grafted tree as soon as possible either in the ground or in a container, size #5 or larger.

A planting hole

a.    If you plant your tree in the ground be sure to set an 8-foot-tall permanent post next to the tree before backfilling the planting hole; making sure not to damage the tree’s roots.

A permanent stake should be set the day of planting

2.    Water the tree well to allow the soil to settle around the frail root system and force out large air pockets.

3.    As the leaves emerge, begin foliar feeding the grafted tree with a diluted water-soluble liquid fertilizer once per week until August first . Take note, leaves from the rootstock will emerge before any signs of life occur from the (scion) grafted wood.

Bud break of grafted apple tree

4.    Never allow the rootstock’s leafy side branches to grow taller than the grafted scion wood. If these lower shoots threaten the dominance of the grafted wood, pinch them back one inch. The rootstock leaves are temporary and will provide carbohydrates to promote root growth and callus growth at the graft union.

5.    If you have not seen life from the grafted wood 8 weeks after grafting, the graft union did not take and the scion wood has died.

6.    July first carefully remove the rubber band and wax wraps from the graft union to prevent compression injury of the graft union tissue.

Remove rubber ties by July 1

Successful graft union of a whip graft

7.    The following March prune back the scion to 2 buds. This forces all the stored energy from the roots to be channeled to a single bud that will quickly grow into a strong trunk. The second (lower) bud is your insurance policy in case the top bud is damaged.

8.    When the top bud begins growing rub out the lower "insurance policy" bud.

9.    Success! Begin training your tree into the growing system of your choice.

Apple tree trained as an Espalier, Denver Botanic Gardens

Learn How to Graft Apple Trees

Posted by: Curtis Utley, Jefferson County Extension

One of the most fantastic horticultural tools discovered by man has to be the art of grafting. The ability to attach a piece of one tree to the branch of another is nothing short of magic. Detached scion grafting was discovered sometime during the first millennium B.C. and contributed to the movement of woody tree fruits out of Asia and into Europe along the silk road (Mudge, K. et al 2009). For Centuries now mankind has been able to perpetuate superior clones of tree fruits by removing a twig or bud from a superior mother plant and attach that twig or bud to a seedling of the same tree species. The result is a replicate of the mother tree growing on the root system of a seedling tree of unknown fruit quality.

Macintosh branch grafted onto Crabapple 

 The practice of grafting is not reserved for fruit trees alone however; many horticultural plants are also reproduced by grafting the most common example is the production of hybrid tea roses. Before the development of tissue culture, the fastest way for a horticulturist to rapidly build up the inventory of a newly discovered rose or other woody plant was by bud grafting. The bud grafting technique is great because the grafter can produce a new plant from a single vegetative bud. If the bud is attached to a large and vigorous rootstock, the plant will often be ready for sale following one season of growth. Grafting is not the only way to produce clones, many plants including roses can be cloned by rooting a cutting. The advantage of grafting is the horticulturist can produce much larger clones and many more of them in a shorter length of time.

Hybrid Tea Rose

Chip bud grafting

Other advantages of grafting include size manipulation, avoidance of juvenility, disease and abiotic stress resistance, damage repair, and the creation of unnatural growth forms. Orchardists and home hobbyists alike have found dwarf fruit trees advantageous. Producing full size fruit on a small tree allows an orchardist the opportunity to plant multiple varieties in the same space it would take to grow one full size fruit tree.  Dwarf fruit trees are also much easier to manage and pick than full size trees. Many fruit bearing trees grown from a seed will not begin bearing fruit until they are mature this is called juvenility. Grafting mature wood onto a seedling tree overcomes this natural habit and allows for fruit production a few years after grafting instead of 15 or more years for a seedling tree to come into bearing.

Production orchard dwarf apple

 Starting in the Twentieth Century research scientists began actively selecting under stalk of horticulturally important crops for resistance against, disease, insect pests, drought, and soil issues allowing these crops to be grown more widely. Even annual crops such as tomatoes and watermelons have been grafted onto hearty rootstocks that have been selected for resistance against soil borne pathogens and greater production. 

Dwarf  limber pine

Grafting also allows horticulturists to produce unique unnatural ornamental growth forms, think of weeping mulberries, weeping cherries, tree form roses, and bonsai conifers.  The last reason for grafting I’ll mention is a technique called inarching. Inarching is a rescue operation orchardists use to save trees that have been girdled by rodents or attacked by a root fungus. New resistant root stock trees are planted directly beside the suffering orchard tree the top of the small rootstock tree is cut off, whittled into a chisel point and inserted (by bending the stem) into a slot cut into the trunk of the suffering tree. When the graft union takes the new rootstock serves as a bridge across the damaged lower trunk or disease ridden root system.

Whip graft

Whip graft budding strip

Successful whip graft union

If you are interested in learning how to graft woody plants I will be teaching a hands-on grafting workshop open to the public on March 31. The workshop will be held at the Jefferson County Extension office located at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. Participants will be producing their own grafted apple tree to take home and plant. Dwarfing rootstock and a variety of apple cultivars to select from will be provided to participants. This workshop will be repeated April 1 and again on April 2. This workshop costs $20.00 per person, space is limited and reservations are required. 

Register at: http://jeffcohort.eventbrite.com

The Jefferson County fairgrounds are located at: 15200 West 6th Ave., Golden, CO 80401

Citation: Mudge, K. et al. 2009; A History of Grafting. Horticultural Reviews, Vol. 35; John Wiley &Sons, Inc.