Daleys Fruit Tree Blog: grafting

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Buy Scionwood from Daleys Nursery to Graft in Your Backyard

We have a new list of Scion wood products here at Daleys!

Get notified when our scionwoods are available for sale

Scion wood is the horticultural term for the wood being grafted onto a rootstock, generally rootstocks are seedlings, maybe a year old, and a matching thickness for the scion wood. Scions are collected from a mature branch from the selected variety. Grafting is one technique used to propagate known varieties of fruit and nut trees, the offspring tree will produce fruit that is identical to the parent tree. It will also start to fruit withing 2-3 years, where as seedlings may take up to 8 years to mature to fruiting age.

Scions can also be grafted onto existing mature trees, which gives you the opportunity to create multi-grafts or enrich your pollination potential with a male branch on a female tree.

Our Shoshoni (B) scionwood will be available in August, for example. and can be grafted onto our pecan seedling products, Apache or Riverside, or as a multi-graft onto one of our other varieties. The video linked below shows Kath, our favourite YouTube host, demonstrating how easy it is to create a multi-grafted citrus tree.

All you need to graft your first plants are a sharp grafting knife, some florists tape or parafilm, your rootstock, and your scion wood.

Scion wood will be available to buy soon on our website, with the Shoshoni Pecan wood coming available in August. We have a special discount of 20% for buying 5 or more scions, and we want to encourage everybody to have a go, it's quite addictive once you start. Our other varieties will be coming available soon, so jump over to our website and search the hashtag #ScionWood to see what is on offer. Don't forget to sign up for our notifications so you can be among the first to each variety as they come up, and feel free to drop a comment or message us if you think we need to expand our range or want to recommend anything in particular.

Top Grafting Citrus Fruit Trees

Rick Daley in an action shot here is demonstrating how to top graft citrus trees with Phil Dudman

Grown By Grafting, Cutting, Seedling, Marcot

Seedling Plant

Seedling

A seed is planted and germinates to grow into a tree. For some plants this is the easiest way to propagate them however there are some draw backs. For example if you plant a seed when the plant finally fruits the taste of the fruit may be nothing like the fruit of parent tree it came from. It will also take longer for a seedling tree to bear fruit than it would for a grafted or cutting grown tree. The pros of a seedling tree is that they have more vigor and are faster and stronger growing than grafted or cutting grown plants, they will also have a much stronger root system which makes them more suitable for marginal climate. For example if you were wanting to grow a longan in Victoria a seedling tree is the best choice for all of these reasons. Seedlings trees will all be genetically different from one another and each tree will be slightly different meaning the fruits your pick off your tree will be unique.A technique called cincturing can also be used to encourage seedling trees to start producing fruit in a shorter time frame than the tree would normally take

A Grafted Plant

A Grafted Plant takes a Scion ( Young shoot ) from a mature tree and then joins this to the rootstock of a seedling plant. This has many advantages. Firstly a rootstock can be selected that is vigorous and disease resistant. Secondly we know the taste and quality of the fruit from the mature tree we took the scion from so we know that when our new grafted tree fruits it will taste the same. Because the tree is mature it also means that the plant will start fruiting straight away or much quicker when compared to a seedling. Grafted plants are more expensive to produce due to the labour involved in propagating them. They also require some degree of maintenance when they are small with particular attention to the suckers that are produced by the more vigorous seedling rootstocks, any shoots that form below the graft need to be removed a process that is called desuckering or they will drain the energy from the graft and if left unchecked they can kill the graft. Because grafted tree do not go through the juvenile phase they tend to be smaller growing than seedling plants and are ideal fro growin in containers where they can be kept as dwarfs or for espalier where pruning and cincturing techniques can be used to keep trees to a compact and manageable size

Cutting Grown Plant

Also known as Striking or Cloning this is is where you take a stem or young shoot from the plant and place it into a soil medium and then under the right conditions this will cause it to produce roots. This method like grafting means that we know the taste of the fruit from this tree. Cuttings grown plants will all be uniform but they can tend to have a weaker root system than seedlings or grafted trees.

Marcotted Grown Plant

Also called Air layering, Marcot, Marcottage and is like a cutting except instead of the roots being formed in a pot inside the soil. It is formed on the branch of the tree inside a plastic bag of soil.

Marcot plants just after harvesting them

Tissue Culture

This is basically making microscopic cuttings. Plant hormones are used to make the cells first divide rapidly and then to differentiate the cells into stem, root and leaf cells. Initially the plant cells need to be grown in sterile conditions to avoid fungus infections, these are called flasks. Once the plantlets have formed roots and shoots they are deflasked into potting media and grown on. Tissue culture is possible because plant cells have the ability to differentiate into different cell types, so the initial cell can turn into leaves, roots and stems forming a whole plant. Tissue cultured plants are genetically true to type and identical to the parent plant and is another form of asexual propagation. It is an excellent method to eliminate viruses from the plants and for this reason it is used for banana propagation.

Rhizomes and Tubers

Plants propagated by rhizomes and tubers are lifted and divided or dug up in the winter when the rhizomes are harvested and replanted. Examples of plants grown in this way are ginger, galangal, arrowroot and asparagus. Rhizomes are typically long term investments and will grow in size, and therefore productivity, with age. Asparagus is, indeed one of these long term investments.
Tubers are neither roots nor rhizomes, but are often found in their company and are, in fact, a growth of reserve nutrients. They are rich in simple carbohydrates (starches) and sugars, which is what makes them so delicious. It is this stored energy that gives them the potential to grow a new plant at a moment’s notice or lay dormant until conditions improve. Sweet potato are an example of a tuber.

Scions

BUY: VIEW ALL SCIONWOODS For Sale

A young piece of wood from a proven quality variety that is grafted onto a rootstock. To purchase this item you need to be competent in grafting.

Scions sold on Daleys Fruit Tree Nursery are rated according to the 3 skill categories below.

Scion Beginner Skill Level

Most people should get success when grafting this scion variety. A practiced grafter should be getting close to 100% success rate.

Scion Intermediate Skill Level

If you have never done a graft before it is best not to start with this variety. However a practiced grafter should be still getting quite good takes. Creating the graft with this variety is often a bit more difficult. You should not be expecting to get 100% takes but 80-95% success rate has been achieved by practiced grafters.

Scion Advanced Skill Level

Only an experienced grafter who has been successful grafting an intermediate scion in the past should attempt to do an advanced scion graft. Even when you are experienced you should be expecting to get 25-75% success rate.

Grafting Fruit Trees - Side Veneer Graft a How To

A Side Veneer Graft on a Mulberry White Shahtoot Tree. The Rootstock Was Morris Nigra. We show you all the stages after you have completed the Grafting to know when to de-sucker and pot into a bigger pot size.

Buy an Already Grafted White Shahtoot Mulberry Tree for $29.00

Side Veneer Grafting Video

Grafting Our Bowen Mango Trees

Nina Grafting Our Bowen Mango Trees

Nina grafting our Bowen Mango Rootstocks with one of our many varieties. Grafting is the art of transforming a seedling rootstock to a selected variety with superior fruiting qualities. Added advantages can be dwarfing, disease resistance, earlier fruiting etc. It's very labour intensive and that is the reason grafted trees are much more expensive. If you wish to learn more we have a youtube on the art of #grafting #mangoes Grafting Fruit Trees Have a go and see if you can topwork some of your trees with 2 or more varieties on the same rootstock and create a #FruitSaladTree