Grafting

One current obsession: grafting.

It started with a painting. Mrguy had a painting reframed and hung it in a place where our view and the painting lined up. The painting, a watercolor of the bay, was painted by a former neighbor and friend who lived nearby when we lived in the "old place". Seeing the painting in a different setting made me think of the painter, and I remembered a personal detail -- she liked to graft roses.

What is that, I wondered? So the obsession began. How does it work? What does it take? What could I graft onto what? My first thought was of grafting another kind of citrus onto our lime tree, which has suddenly become robust after many dweeby years.

Research led me to the knowledge that it is illegal to graft citrus in our state. The only place to legally buy citrus scions is here.

But in the meantime, I learned that the local rare fruit growers group was having a scion exchange at my old school. A scion, since you're asking, is a green stick -- the bud wood that you are going to graft onto your existing plant or tree to make whatever you're grafting grow on your tree. You make a notch on a branch of the recipient tree, then whittle the scion into a point, line up the cambian layer of both, do some other stuff, and with any luck the new thing will grow on the existing thing. Some people have apple trees, for example, with lots of different varieties of apples on it, that they've grafted onto the existing tree. And you can graft a quince onto a pear, I learned. How did I learn? At a grafting class, taught before the scion exchange. Packed! I sat on the floor.

What's a scion exchange? People bring small lengths of budwood to an exchange. They put them in a plastic bag and label it. Someone lays out the budwood on tables, organized by the type of scions. There were zillions of different kinds of apples, for example, all laid out together. At the scion exchange, you pay an entrance fee and then you may take anything you want with you. You bring your own ziploc bags and masking tape and a pen, choose a scion you want, and use the masking tape to label the little sticks of budwood you've selected, so you know what you are grafting.

The class was great, and the scion exchange was a little intimidating. I only have citrus trees to graft onto, so I mostly just browsed and hyperventilated. I went home with some plants grown by the horticultural club and a gigantic sack of Cara Cara oranges.