Grafting Tree Fruits and Its Benefits

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Grafting Tree Fruits and Some Of Its Benefits

It can be difficult for farmers to earn their livelihoods from growing only grain crops. That’s why it’s good to learn new methods which increase production to farm our own land. One method is by making a nursery to grow improved fruit tree seedlings. This means you can grow tasty and nutritious fruit on your own land, and at the same time sell or trade extra production to earn cash. There are many methods of joining local wild fruit tree rootstock to high producing improved varieties. One of those methods, is called grafting. Grafting is a method of joining the cutting (scion) of an improved variety of fruit tree onto the root (rootstock) of a local compatible variety.

Many garden plants that we love and grow are actually made up of two different plants that have been skilfully joined together by the grower. This grafting has overcome many a propagation problem but it has also given us the opportunity to grow a far greater range of plants in our gardens. This is the benefit of grafted fruit trees to the nurseryman and also to the gardener.

You see, it is all very well finding a new variety as a side shoot of a plant but, if that little piece will not grow roots as a cutting, then the opportunity to propagate it and make it more widely available will be lost. You might think that the answer is to wait for that desirable piece of the plant to produce seeds. Sadly, few plants will be exactly the same when raised from seed and will have reverted to the original unimproved mother plant or will have hybridized into something quite random!

So for hundreds of years, both gardeners and nurserymen have been practicing the age old technique of taking a little piece of a plant and very skillfully attaching it to another so that it grows as one plant. The root part of the plant is called a ‘root stock’ and the little piece that is attached to it is the ‘scion’.

The kind of plants that we take for granted that are regularly grafted include flowers, virtually all fruit trees, many ornamental garden and street trees and a fair few of the most desirable garden shrubs!

The Benefits of grafting

Grafted trees produce fruit quicker. A tree grown from seed may take 8-10 years to fruit, but a grafted tree will only take 2-4 years.
A tree grown from seed may produce poor tasting fruit. Grafting is done to improve the taste and size of the fruit.
A tree grown from seed may not produce fruit the same as the tree the seed came from (mother tree). But a grafted tree will be just as good as the tree the cutting (scion) came from.
A grafted tree will continue to give the same quality fruit for many years.
Grafted fruit trees can be sold to give an income to the household.
By producing your own seedlings and fruit, you save money.
Seedlings can be produced locally, saving time in searching for the right fruit trees to plant
Some trees end up developing more resistance to diseases and adverse conditions than other trees. This disease resistance and hardiness is transferred from the rootstock (the plant being grafted onto) to the scion (the plant being propagated).

Below are some of the grafted fruit trees that we have. If in need, kindly contact us and we will deliver.

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