By Shannon Brines
I first learned about grafting as a child who was very interested in trees. The notion that most fruit and nut orchards used a plant propagation technique known as grafting to essentially “clone” trees continues to fascinate. Later in my teens and twenties, I encountered abandoned orchard trees backpacking in places like Sleeping Bear Dunes or Appalachia and thought again a bit about the concept of grafting and how it might be used to replicate “found” trees. But it wasn’t until 2012 when I expanded Brines Farm, onto 80 additional acres that I was put into a position where I would really need grafting as a tool. That first year on our expanded acreage we planted around 100 fruit trees and within a few years we were experiencing the loss of trees due to diseases like fire blight. It was at that point my desire to have interesting varieties of trees (heirloom, heritage, antique, etc.) coupled with the desire to have more resilient trees pushed me to realize I needed to try my hand at grafting.
One of the main reasons to graft a fruit tree is to get the cultivated variety (cultivar) that we desire, say an apple or pear variety that is hard to find. It is also possible to impart some qualities onto the overall tree through the selection of a specific rootstock.
Grafting as a plant propagation technique is somewhat simple when used for fruit trees. It involves joining a young cutting, called a scion, to rootstock. The rootstock can be an older, very well-rooted cutting, or a mature tree in the landscape. The scion becomes the stems, branches, and eventual top of the grafted tree.
The rootstock and scion are cut and joined in a way that allows the the tissue just under the bark of each part to be physically touching. You secure that connection, and let the plant biology take over. While there are lots of other details, that really is the basics behind it and one can become pretty adept at the grafting steps themselves in fairly short order
Watching this healing of what could be described as a massive wound is awe inspiring, and pretty impressive of mother nature. . On our farm we’ve done quite well at performing successful graft unions. What is more challenging is keeping numerous young grafted trees healthy despite drought or despite deer, rabbit, and other mammal pressure.
From the textbook Hartmann and Kester’s Plant Propagation,8th edition.
Grafting skills have been useful to add to biodiversity projects of Slow Food Huron Valley, an organization in which I’ve been an active leader for over 15 years.
Slow Food International has a huge biodiversity database project called The Ark of Taste. Our SFHV chapter participated in putting the Jesuit (a.k.a. Old French or Mission) Pear into the database. These pear trees are thought to be offspring of pear trees believed to have been planted by French Jesuit missionaries, thus the name, or French settlers in the Windsor and Detroit area in the 1700s. A future project may be to further identify these historic pear trees through genetic testing.
Over the last handful of years we have found and mapped such trees in the US and Canadian Lake Erie watershed, taken cuttings from them that could be used as scion wood, and replicated the trees by grafting.
This has also allowed us to empower people with the skills to graft their own trees. We have presented grafting workshops as well as tasting events in Michigan and Ontario (including Detroit, Monroe, Ann Arbor, Traverse City, and Chatham-Kent). Typically our grafting workshops or tasting events have been 1-2 dozen people, although we did present to and train over 100 attendees at the 2019 Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference session on grafting.
The grafting system or method we have focused on primarily in our presentations and workshops has been bench grafting. Bench grafting can be done indoors in late Winter or early spring with scion wood and rootstocks that are both still dormant. Generally one collects scion wood from a candidate tree by looking for “pencil diameter” recent growth with healthy looking buds. You can also order scion wood from some orchards, nurseries, and trusted sources.
We encourage everyone to try their hand at grafting. Replicate a lost and found tree, or duplicate your favorite tree from your grandmother’s house! The slides from our Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference presentation have some additional details.
The partnership of Slow Food Huron Valley, Brines Farm, and Bløm Meadworks will be offering a grafting workshop on April 10, 2022 at 4pm. Attendees will be able to graft one “Ark of Taste” apple or pear variety included with their registration. Some materials for additional trees will be available for additional cost.
I welcome your questions and comments. Typically I can be found Saturday mornings at our Brines Farm stalls (#99-100) at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. Brines Farm will also hold on-farm nursery sales of tree, shrub, and berry plants on select weekends in May.