GRAFTING FOR BEGINNERS

A Pictorial Guide

WHY GRAFT?

If you wish to propagate a named cultivar then it must be done

vegetatively, i.e. by cuttings, grafts or micro prop. Seedlings off a
named cultivar, even if looking similar must not be given the same
name. If you have a particularly fine Adenium that you wish to
propagate quickly then grafting will provide the means for this.
Cuttings use up much more material and are much more ‘iffy’. An
efficient grafter will get well over 90% ‘takes’ i.e. successes. Also,
some seedlings are very slow to grow on their own roots and
grafting them onto vigorous rootstocks can enormously speed up
their growth and flowering.

Arizona seedling#4 A. boehmianum original seedlings in front

Mother in front, graft behind grafts after just 3 months behind

Grafting Adeniums is easy but potentially dangerous. You need

very steady hands and excellent vision to perform this plant
surgery. Unless you have a delicate touch and are ‘good with your
hands’ i.e. you need to have good manual dexterity, leave grafting
to others, otherwise you may accidentally give yourself serious
cuts; either to your fingers or your thigh (or both!).

I have only been grafting Adeniums for about 3 years so do not

have the experience of many others. This is my personal
technique. It works for me and I am sure it would work for you. If
you have not grafted Adeniums before, start with this technique and
as you gain more confidence you may wish to modify the technique
for your own convenience.

If you have experience of grafting fruit trees, shrubs, trees both

broadleaved and conifers or budding roses, this will help but the
skills are a little different. When I first started to graft Adeniums, I
used the techniques I learned for grafting Magnolias. Most of the
grafts took but frequently resulted in ugly unions. This was
because, where the rootstock was significantly wider than the scion,
I matched the cambium up on one side only. This resulted in
unattractive one sided grafts. Then, I received some grafted plants
from Mr. Ko in Taiwan where he had obviously grafted a relatively
small scion into a relatively large rootstock but placed the graft
centrally. I was shocked that these grafts could be successful as no
cambium contact could have been achieved. Later, I learned that
grafting Adeniums is much more like grafting cactus. It is best to
match both of the central vascular bundles i.e. place the graft
centrally. This results in a much neater graft.

If you are serious about grafting Adeniums you will need some basic
equipment:

An efficient amateur’s grafting tables

1 Grafting Knife. If you have your faithful Tina 605 grafting

knife or are used to using scalpel blades, forget them for Adeniums!
This is because the caustic sap of Adeniums extremely rapidly
blackens steel and makes a terrible mess. This is much reduced if
you use a titanium coated blade such as the Lenox Gold. The Lenox
knife SSRK 1 with a retractable blade, I find ideal. I purchased a
Truper Knife with a retractable steel blade here in Venezuela. Here
the knives are sold but not the replacement blades. If you need a
new blade you have to purchase a new knife! I was therefore
surprised to find that the Lenox Blades will fit the Truper Knife. The
Lenox SSRK 1 knife together with a 50 pack of spare blades is
available from www.amazon.com for just $28.81. I find one blade
keeps its edge for at least 100 grafts and then you can reverse it for
yet another 100 grafts.
 Ideal grafting knife with dental tweezers.

2 Chopping block. I use a tropical oak hardwood ‘cut off’

approximately 7" x 4" and about 1 inch thick.

3 Bottle of industrial alcohol, I use Isopropyl. This is to dip you

knife in, after every cut, to sterilize the blade.

4 Small narrow container to hold about an inch of alcohol. The

bottom half of a small plastic bottle I find ideal. Do not use a glass
or hard plastic container as this could rapidly damage the sharp tip
of the blade.

5 Disposable paper serviettes, for lining the chopping block.

6 Toilet tissue for wiping and cleaning the knife. Kleenex Medical
Wipes would be more elegant but are unavailable here on the edge
of the jungle.

7 Natural rubber grafting strips. I find these superior to plastic

string or silicone tape as they are flexible and will decompose after
about 6 weeks when dampened and in light. This avoids any
problem of forgetting to untie your graft and later strangling it.

8 Fungicide. I use a small margarine pot half filled with any

make of fungicide. I cut a small hole in the lid and have inserted an
old tooth brush.

9 Small polythene bags for covering the finished graft.

10 Dental tweezers to assist in tying the rubber grafting strips

(Claudius Ash, Surgery No.13, catalogue number 6242 5013, or
similar).
11 Note book, preferably hard backed, to keep a note of the
grafts, dates and number of takes.

12 Propelling pencil 0.5mm for keeping the notes

13 Rubber eraser for corrections

14 Plastic plant labels

15 HB ordinary pencil for writing on the labels (the propelling

pencil gives print too narrow and can soon become illegible)

16 Pencil sharpener

17 Special close up spectacles (if you are 40 or more)

VISION

If you are under 40 years old skip this paragraph. Grafting

Adeniums is an extremely delicate operation and you need excellent
close up vision. As a retired optometrist here is what I would
recommend. At the age of 40, even if you are emmetropic (i.e.
have perfect distance vision) a pair of inexpensive, ready-made,
half eye reading spectacles of +2.00 will be useful or possibly
essential. If you are aged 50 then ask you optometrist to give you
an especially high reading addition of around +3.00 and over the
age of 60 you will need +4.00, and over 65 +4.50. Also request
your optometrist to check you eyes muscle balance (I am sure he
will have already done this) and if he finds any significant exophoria
then I would suggest he prescribes for you a small amount of base
in prism to avoid eye strain or headaches when undertaking this
very close detailed work.

GRAFTING STRIPS

I find the best size of grafting strip to be 8" by ¼" by 0.3 mm

(0.012") thick in natural rubber. If you are doing flat grafting then
the 5½" by ¼" split down both ends just leaving 3 or 4 mm joined
in the middle is ideal for holding the graft down (also 0.3 mm
thick). For tying the bags over the completed graft I use a grafting
strip of 5½" by ⅛" and 0.5 mm (0.020") thick.
A few years ago I purchased a large supply of these from Rapidex
Products Limited of Cheshire, England but they seem to have gone
out of business. You can purchase very similar products from OBC
Northwest Inc. (www.obcnw.com)
 Grafting Strips

SELECTING ROOSTOCKS

I like to use seedling rootstock at least 18 months old with a

diameter at the grafting union thicker than a pencil and preferably
at least ½ inch in diameter. You can use rootstocks raised from
cuttings but I do not like these as they are slow to form a good
caudex. Also if the mother plant of the cuttings had virus then the
cuttings will also have it and in turn would transfer the virus to the
graft. Seedlings are invariably virus free.

WHAT TYPE OF GRAFT?

There are two types of grafts commonly employed with Adeniums:

The ‘V’ graft and the ‘Flat’ graft.

The vast majority of grafts of the ‘V’ type. This is a relatively easy
graft to perform but the surgery is more complex that the ‘Flat’
graft. Flat grafts are useful if you wish to propagate many plants
from a small amount of material. The flat graft is little used in the
west but is popular in some far eastern countries. The flat graft
uses only one or two eyes of the scion whereas the traditional ‘V’
graft uses at least three and probably four. Although the surgery of
flat grafts is very simple the tying of the scion to the rootstock is
very ‘fiddley’ and takes a relatively long time.

‘V’ GRAFTS

1 First prepare the rootstock:

 Seedling rootstock First rough cut
ready for decapitation

I use two knives. The first with a very sharp blade for the surgery,
and an old knife with an older blade for the first rough cut. This
first cut takes a lot of effort and could possibly blunt the surgical
blade very quickly. After the first cut remember to clean the blade
with some new toilet tissue, then dip the blade in alcohol and dry it
on fresh toilet tissue.

2 Now prepare the scion.

Cover your chopping block with 3 or 4 paper napkins. This will
cushion the knife and help keep its edge. Also by changing the
napkins after each cultivar it stops any possible cross infection.

Now cut about 1 to 1½ inches off the donor material for the scion,
cutting just above an ‘eye’ as shown. Now make two cuts to form
the ‘V’ as shown. A good tip, for applying the second cut, in order
to get the this in exactly the correct position, it is to ‘squint’ over
the blade (with just one eye) to see that the knife is in the true
position so that it will cut to a perfect parallel point as shown.
Again remember frequently to dip your knife in alcohol and clean it
between every cut.

3 Now Prepare the Rootstock

First slice a thin sliver off the top of the rootstock. Examine the
prepared scion and judge its diameter. You need to cut and equal
and opposite ‘V’ into the rootstock. It is best to make the cut on
the rootstock just a little narrower than the diameter of the scion.
This will mean that you can push the scion into the rootstock and
very little pressure, if any will be needed to keep the cut surfaces in
contact whilst they heal. If you accidentally make the cut too wide,
it is not a disaster but it will mean that you will have to tie the graft
with much greater pressure for the graft to succeed. I frequently
don’t bother to tie the graft when the scion is pushed into the
rootstock with gentle pressure with perfect contact.

First cut a very thin sliver off Now position the knife for the
the rootstock first cut, just under half the
diameter of the scion

Take the first cut Now gently align the knife

to the exact tip of the first cut

Now make the second cut, and remove the ‘V’ as shown
This shows the scion just a little wider than the rootstock, when pushed home it
forms a perfect junction. You are now ready to apply the grafting strip

Tie first knot as shown Finish the graft as shown, the use
of tweezers is essential to tie the
second knot successfully

The above four photos are for demonstration only. The scion has
been placed at the front of the rootstock to make the photos more
understandable. The scion should be placed in the middle of the
rootstock as shown below:

Correctly placed scion When you get more experienced you

can try a multigraft like this

Now all that remains to do is to place a small translucent plastic bag

over the graft and then write a label and enter the details into your
graft notebook. Then place the completed grafts in full shade.
Within around ten days you should see the buds swelling. I take
the plastic bags off at two weeks and untie the rubbers after about
a month.

Grafts sprouting after 14 days

The bags are held in place with a small grafting strip. The bags are
removed after two weeks when most of the grafts will be sprouting.
They are then kept in partial shade for about three months after
which they then go out into full sun.

FLAT GRAFTS

These are exactly what they say they are. The surgery is very
simple (and much less dangerous!). But tying the scion onto the
rootstock is difficult and takes time. I have very little experience of
this type of graft but am using it more and more when I have only a
little material to use for grafting. Single eye grafts are quite
feasible with this technique.

The techniques are very similar. Prepare the rootstock exactly as

above. However to prepare the scion you just need to cut a single
eye from the donor material. I smear the top of the scion with just
a little powdered fungicide, next cut a sliver off the top of the
rootstock and also a very thin sliver off the scion. Place the scion
on top of the rootstock and then place a split grafting tie over the
scion. Then tie as shown. It is not as easy as it looks! Using the
split grafting tie, you use the four ‘legs’ as guy ropes. Pull each one
of the four individually to get a nice even pressure of the scion on
top of the rootstock. Then proceed exactly as for ‘V’ grafts. Good
luck.
Scion top covered in fungicide Enclose the ‘guy ropes’ with a
grafting tie, then pull to get good contact

Single eye flat grafts sprouting after just seven days. Note that the
central vascular bundles have united and the rest of the rootstock receded

An old plant, pruned and multi flat grafted with ‘LaOng Tong’ to
form this spectacular specimen plant. (photo off the internet)