 My name is Joel Reich. I live in Longmont, Colorado, and I'm extremely fond of growing fruit. So I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about grafting, specifically of fruit trees, why we do it, why it's a ton of fun, and some of the great things you can do for yourself and others if you learn the relatively basic skills involved in grafting. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about why we graft. I'm going to show you some of the ways that we graft, and then I'm going to show you also some of the results of some grafting projects I've done here in my yard over the last decade. So I'm here today with a newly created commis pear tree that I grafted. It would have been about two months ago today. We'll look closer later, but the graft is right in here. So I wanted to explain basically why we do grafting by starting with a question that I get probably 30 or 40 times a year, which is, if I eat a piece of fruit and it's delicious, it knocks my socks off, can I take the seeds out of that fruit, plant them, and grow a tree that will produce the same fruit? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Fortunately, thousands of years ago, our ancestors figured out a way to make more of those delicious trees. Okay, so we've talked a bit about how you make a new tree and why you make a new tree, and certainly that's the most common reason why people do grafting is producing new trees. But I want to show you a couple other really awesome things not to be overlooked that you can do with grafting. So this tree right here, I grew just a root stock that would not make good fruit for a couple of years until I could develop a nice branching structure. Then this spring, just about two months ago, I lopped off the ends of all of these branches, and I've added several different varieties of the most delicious pears I can find, at least in my opinion, to this tree. So now, for the rest of its life, each of these branches is going to be making a different type of pear. They're going to ripen at slightly different times of the year, because you can only eat so many pears at once. So if you learn how to do grafting, and it's not that hard, folks, this is one type of thing you can do, make a multi-grafted tree in your own yard with your own personally selected varieties that you like. Let me show you a couple other things we can do. So if we take a look down here at this tree, doesn't look like much, but there's actually a pretty awesome story here. This was one of my very favorite trees. It's the Mullins Golden Delicious. But unfortunately, over the last couple of years, it got an infection and died. But I don't need to completely replace the tree by digging a new hole, buying a new tree. What I did is I got the root system to grow us a healthy sucker. Then this spring, I grafted on a scion piece of the same variety that this tree used to be, so that I could return to having the same kind of apples in the same place. We've wiped out the disease and we're restarting. And this didn't require me to buy a new tree, dig a hole, and I'm actually going to get the benefit of a well-established root system. I'll be back into getting fruit on this in about one year. Fun other things you can do once you learn how to graft. This here is a 15 year old, pretty large, spring snow crab apple. That means it blooms, but it doesn't make any fruits. Certainly doesn't make edible apples. But when grafting, one of the things you learn is which different genera of plants can you actually graft together. And so what I've done here is I've taken a lovely edible apple variety and joined it onto this spring snow crab apple. So the rest of the tree will continue to just be an ornamental crab apple tree. But year after year, starting next year, this branch and any new branches that develop off of it will produce delicious edible apples. Hey, so I want to show you the materials we're going to be using today when I demonstrate technique of how to do a whip graft. So just moving from right to left, first we've got some parafilm. It's a paraffin wax infused plasticky tape, essentially, that's got some significant stretch to it. And we're going to use that to wrap around the graft union to retain moisture. It really doesn't allow moisture to escape, and we need all the faces of our graft union to stay moist so that they can grow together. If they dry out, they will not graft effectively. This here is one of many types of grafting compounds that I'm going to use to kind of slather onto the graft after it's been made again to hold the moisture in. Are you picking up? That's important. We need to keep the graft moist. I've got some rubbing alcohol here just to keep all of my cutting tools clean. Good sanitation is always important. Electrical tape. We're not doing any electrical stuff today, but you'll see this is going to be really helpful as the physical wrapper to hold the faces of our graft union together physically. And then I lied. I didn't go directly right to left. This here is our grafting tool. This is an Italian-made one. It kind of looks like funky pliers, but there's some important shaped cutting blades right in here that are going to make a nice cut for us. These are a relatively modern innovation. I kind of love them. I would say that it has taken my grafting success rate from the mid-80s percentage wise to the high 90s. Now when I say this has improved my grafting technique and success rate, what I was doing previously, which is kind of more old-fashioned, was using a traditional grafting knife. This one happens to be made in Germany. You'll see a lot of them are. You probably can't quite see, but this blade is flat on one side and beveled on one side. And that's what you're going to want. There are many different types of grafting knives. For whip grafts, you're going to want to have one that's only beveled on one side. And then you're going to see how I'm going to use this base and mallet to do some really nice cuts with this here. And then right in front you can see we've got some material that I'm going to actually use. These are apple shoots that I'm going to use to demonstrate the grafting. And also just wanted to show you I took a piece of one of them and I stripped off just the outside bark to expose this nice green layer that exists just under the bark on all trees. That's the cambium layer. And the key to the grafting I'm going to show you today, as well as every other form of grafting, is to line up the cambium in your scion with the cambium in your root stalk or the mother tree you're trying to graft onto. That is the layer of tissue that is going to knit together between the two pieces. So you have to get good contact and line up between the cambium layers on the two pieces. So with that introduced, let's go ahead and look at the actual techniques. I'm going to show you both old-fashioned and newfangled. Okay, so enough of the descriptions. Let's do some grafting. So I just wanted to introduce a couple things first. These two thicker pieces here, these for demonstration purposes, these will be our stand-in either for the rootstock or a branch on the mother tree. This is what we're grafting to. These two slightly thinner pieces, these will be our scions. Okay, and I'm going to show you the two different methods using the knife and the mallet and also the grafting tool. And I just wanted to point out a couple things in addition. I've got a couple pieces of electrical tape already cut and prepped ready for me. I've also got a few pieces of the parafilm already cut and ready. Once you've got these nice grafts made there is a real motivation to get it done quickly so things again don't dry out. So having those pieces prepped first makes a lot of sense. I also want to point something out just to help you avoid a classic beginner's mistake in grafting. These kind of disembodied stems like this, many people will accidentally put them upside down and graft them backwards which will not lead to success. But most fruit trees are very helpful in that these little dormant growth buds point up. They're kind of an arrow shape and they point up. So do just always make sure you've got all your pieces arranged in the correct direction. Now, I'm going to move this to the side, this and this to the side, and we're going to do this method. And so the idea is I'm going to, we're always going to make our cuts in the internodes, the spaces between the little shoots or the nodes themselves. Okay? So I'm going to lay the knife down on the internode at a long and relatively flat angle and then I'm going to whack it decisively. Can you see the nice flat angle that I've got there? Let me just point something out. The reason I use this and the mallet is that if you try to make a similar cut, see how you often get this very long tail and then you end up having to kind of shave it down and that angle is not nearly as flat and perfect as what I was able to make using this. Okay? So I just wanted to point out for those of you who may be wondering why is he using the mallet? That's why. Okay? So I've got my rootstock piece cut. Now I'm going to do the same thing and I'm going to attempt to make the same angle with my scion piece. Okay? Looks pretty good to me. You can see on both of them now those nice green rings. You've got a bit of a green ring right in the center. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the green ring right at the very outside edge here. Okay? So the goal in grafting is going to be to get those layers lined up. Now if you notice here, as is very common when we're grafting, these are not the exact same diameter. And so I cannot lay it on and get 360 degrees of contact, not to fear. You just pick one side and line it up nice and flush with one side or the other. See here? I've got a side that's not lined up. That's okay. And so I've got it lined up. Now I'm going to take one of my pieces of pre-cut electrical tape and I'm going to use that and that slight stretchiness that it has to wrap. Okay? So this tape here, the goal is not to seal the moisture in. We've got other tape for that. The goal with your electrical tape is to make a nice physically strong connection where you've got those cambium layers lined up. Okay? So having done that, now it's time to use the parafilm. Okay? It's got this paper backing, which I'm going to take off. And now watch this. I'm going to lay the parafilm on at either the upper or lower bound of my electrical tape. I'm going to pin it down with a thumb, and then I'm going to gently stretch while spinning so that this covers from just below the electrical tape to just above. And one of the things that's really nice about this parafilm is that once it's stretched, if you push it back onto itself, it sticks. It's not exactly sticky, but it does adhere because of the waxiness. Okay? So now we've got a pretty nicely made graph. We've got it wrapped for physical strength with the electrical tape, and now for a moisture barrier, a vapor seal, if you will, with the parafilm. Now finally, this is where the grafting compound comes in. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to, I think the technical word is slather. I'm going to slather from below the tape to above the tape. And notice, mostly I'm going up towards the tip, but you also need to go back to make sure you get every little crack and cranny covered with this. And then quite importantly, you might think, Oh, I just need to seal up the graph union itself. But it actually makes a whole lot of sense to go ahead and continue and cover the rest of the scion, including the very tip of the scion. Okay, I can't really overstress how important it is that we retain moisture in this whole portion until this heals. Okay. Now, once we get a successful graft, you will see one, two, three or even four of the little buds underneath here, they will start to grow, and they will just push their way right through this grafting compound that will be dry by that time. Okay, so that's our whip graft using the mallet and the grafting knife. Next, I'm going to show you how to use this grafting tool. And having seen the knife and mallet technique, I think you're going to be in a good position to recognize and appreciate why this tool can increase your success. Here is our basal piece or rootstock. Here's going to be our scion. And I should point out also at this point, I remember when I was new to grafting, I would put really long scions on thinking will more buds means more likelihood that at least one of them will grow. Turns out that's not good thinking on my part. And I've learned subsequently that actually a pretty short scion with only three nodes is really going to give you the best success. Okay, and I'll also point out one other thing. When you're looking at a whip, your your scion may come as a long whip like this. This is the youngest last grown part of the growth. This is the oldest basal part. You're always going to get your best scions from this bottom half of a one year old whip. Okay, so let's get right into it here. I've got my rootstock facing the correct direction. And now I'm going to put it into the grafting tool so that the blade is lined up at the internode and then give it a nice decisive crunch. Okay, and there we've got the saddle portion. Now here's our scion. Got it pointed the right way. I'm going to put it in the same way. I've got the saddle. I need the corresponding point. So now instead of just having those two flat angles that I really need to hold together carefully while I'm taping it. Look how easy this is. Okay, I can even take my hand away and it just sticks right in there nicely. Okay, and if you look again, I've got instead of just one surface with the cambium exposed, I've got essentially a long you on this side along you on this side and corresponding long use in there. So again, I'm going to put my pieces together. I've got all the buds facing in the correct direction. I'm gonna grab my electrical tape. That's okay. Don't worry. And now I'm going to see watch this. I'm going to. Don't worry. It's okay still quite forgiving here. I'm going to stretch that electrical tape and spin and wrap it around. So now we've got our physical taping. Now I'm going to go back to the Parafilm, get us our vapor barrier wrapping. Again, I'm going to hold it with my thumb and just gently stretch as I do a spiral spin. Now I should point out here. When you're doing a bench graft, you've got the luxury of having an axis you can move around and you can spin. Okay, this wrapping is slightly more difficult when you're adding this branch onto a tree because of course the tree cannot be just manipulated and rotated around in which case you're going to be doing more of this kind of wrap rather than spinning it. Okay, but that is one thing that makes a bench graft particularly easy. So we've got that nicely wrapped. Now I'm going to coat again upwards. Now I'm going to work downwards to catch any little gaps. And notice I've covered up the top of the scion nicely. Okay, so there we go. And that is your completed graft using the grafting tool. Okay, now you're all experts.