Grafting Time is Here Again

C'mon everybody, sing:

Grafting days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let's sing a song of cheer again
Grafting days are here again…

So, what's so great about these days? At Buchholz Nursery there's an extra hop to our step because we have begun our summer grafting campaign. It's my 48th consecutive season – always beginning in July – where the propagating results directly determined my financial well-being. In other words I only got paid for "take-grafts" when I first provided contract services, then also so for the 44 years of my nursery ownership. During the entire time the employees got paid even if their grafts failed; their wages were guaranteed while mine never were.

I'm typically nervous the first few days of maple grafting, wondering if it will work yet again. So many things can go wrong. I worry if my scionwood is sufficiently mature, or if the rootstock is adequately rooted-in from our March potting from plug-to-3 1/2" pots. Do we have enough graft bands for the season, as we have about 65,000 maple, oaks, ginkgoes etc. to slice this summer? Plug in the cooler – does it still run?

New Buchholz employee Jordan and I share the scion cutting duties which worked out well last winter for conifers, but now he carries more responsibilities and projects than before. I wanted him to also spend time at the grafting bench because an accomplished grafter with a few seasons under his belt makes for a better scion cutter, but I'm not sure when he'll squeeze in the time. I suppose I'll have to get up a little earlier and stay at work a little longer so Jordan can find more time to escape the relentless grafters who constantly nip at the scion cutter's heels.

David grafting

The new grafter, foreground

There's nothing magical about grafting, not at all, and I've even taught monkeys and European interns how to perform the short, precise operation. This summer we are training a new grafter – neither monkey nor intern – but of course we select varieties for him that are relatively straight and medium-sized; and importantly: those cultivars which we have aplenty, and not the newest and rare scions where we hope to rapidly increase numbers. Our main-man David (an 18-year nursery veteran) gets the hard-to-do stuff, the tiny scions, the short, chubby single node shoots and the hot, new varieties. He accepts his role, owns it to a large extent, and I often see him in the greenhouse before work, after work and even at lunch time where he inspects and cheers on his propagants. It's rewarding for me to work with someone who exhibits pride, since most employees I've been saddled with in my career clearly do not. David is certainly our most accomplished grafter, but I foresee the day when he is elevated as the main scion cutter, because that's the more difficult and important task.

"Cuttin' sticks" is how I euphemistically describe the scion harvest, but it's a very personal, intimate relationship that the propagator develops with the trees. It was always my favorite nursery assignment, but for me it was also the most essential for company survival. If I was to express pride for any skill in my career, it was how I was able to go from one gifted plant, or a few scions, and then to transform that quickly into hundreds or thousands even of salable offspring. None of the larger companies, nor any company of any size for that matter, could keep up with me in the increasement of a new cultivar.

Acer palmatum 'Hana matoi'

The original top graft 'Hana matoi'

One relatively new variety, Acer palmatum 'Hana matoi', will certainly explain my point. I started out with a one-gallon pot, gifted to me by the late – but then alive – Jim Schmidt, a notable Oregon maple grower. I expressed gratitude, like I was going to put it into an ornamental pot on my deck next to the bird bath. But immediately I sized it up for six or seven single-node scions. I thinned out the canopy of a 7-8' specimen of Acer palmatum 'O sakazuki' and top-grafted the 'Hana matoi', one on each of the best-balanced rootstock shoots. Five grafts "took" and the following summer they exploded with three-to-four feet of dangling new growth. These too were cut into single-node scions and the following year I was able to produce a couple of hundred…and just one year past that about eight hundred were accomplished. So in just four years from a humble little pot, I was in major production. Since the initial extravaganza, however, we have backed off with 'Hana matoi' because a portion (too large) could revert to just a non-variegated, reddish laceleaf. In that regard it's similar to its seed-parent tree of Acer palmatum 'Toyama nishiki'.

Acer palmatum 'Red Panda'

Jordan and I serve two masters: 1) MrMaple's wish-list of which cultivars we should propagate, and at what numbers, and 2) reality. Yes, the parent company would "like" a hundred of this and five hundred of that – and as soon as possible – but the realistic situation is that we currently have more graftable rootstocks than we have scions for the rare, new or difficult-to-graft cultivars which their customers are clamoring for. The point is that Jordan and I must acquiesce to the dictates of ownership as much as, and whenever possible, but we can't invent quality scionwood out of thin air. We compromise, however, by taking more risk by cutting single-node, or questionably thin, or softer scions in active growth, or perhaps we use two or three-year wood just to find a firm, straight, healthy stick, even though we know our "take" percentage will be lower. The best scenario would be to plant acres of five-to-ten-year-old stock trees (in unlimited numbers), on a continuously rotating basis; then propagating life would be more simple and straight-forward, and I wouldn't be trying to now describe the intricacies and nuances of the scion harvest.

Ok, my above words that try to describe the propagator's dilemma cannot fully explain the mental and physical process. Whenever Jordan asks me a simple question it can lead to a 15-minute disquisition that seldom answers him simply and directly; I typically surround and poke at the subject from various points of view, but when his eyes eventually glaze over I quickly wrap it up with "Good luck" or, exasperating for him, I might say "Figure it out for yourself" by trying various methods and then keeping track of the results. "Even though my career is nearly finished I'm looking forward to you teaching me."

My youngest daughter, S., who is now 18 years old, didn't need a 15-minute speech to explain scion preparation. Her older sister, L., now about age 37, was visiting and volunteered to help S. with scion preparation. The project involved cutting leaves from the shoot, plus shortening the graft-stick to an appropriate length if necessary. L. asked her little sister, "How do you decide where to prune the tip of the scion?" S. has prepared approximately 200,000 in her short, six-year career and I trust her completely, plus she is speedier than any other whom I've ever employed. After pondering a few seconds she replied, "Well, you just go with your gut feeling." S. didn't need 15 minutes to poke and prod the question, and her response was perfect. L. didn't get the explanation she was seeking, but she was impressed none-the-less, but later teased me with mock concern that I had brain-washed her little sister. Besides my influence, S. was nurtured by her Japanese mother who seldom proclaims absolutes, and who answers either/or questions with, "It depends on the situation." I don't know – maybe it's just a female thing.

The bulk of our rootstock for Acer palmatum is purchased as a 1-year, 3/16" caliper plug which is potted into a 3 1/2" pot in early March. The preferred source for maple seedlings is Oregon's Heritage Seedlings. These plugs are produced in a temperature-controlled environment in artificial media and they are always straight and healthy and completely disease free. They are still dormant when potted, but we begin by pruning the tops by half. Approximately by mid-June they will have regrown another 12-18", and they are topped again…back to the original potting size. We use a mechanical hedge pruner that makes the task quick and easy, while in the old days we plodded along by pruning each rootstock individually with hand-held Felcoes. That practice was unnecessarily tedious, but it took me a couple of decades before I figured it out. The purpose of keeping the rootstock reduced is to 1) build caliper, 2) as an aid to disease control by allowing more air movement and 3) to reduce watering needs. A final reducing of the rootstock takes place in September-October for the same reasons above, and also to provide more air and light to the fledgling grafts. Finally, the following March, the rootstocks are removed completely so all the energy then goes to the new graft which is ready for pot-up to a one-gallon container. I don't know how a machine could help with most of the procedures; unfortunately it is an extremely labor-intensive process.

Now that I'm not saddled with nursery ownership, though still partially employed, I am promoting a couple of experiments:

First, we will graft 100 Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood', a cultivar that is plentiful for us, usually with high “takes.” A single grafter will perform all, so as to eliminate one possible variable. The scion unions will be wrapped in rubber budding strips like we have done for my entire career. For the first decade of Buchholz Nursery the rubber stayed intact for an entire year with no sign of decomposing. A year later we would physically remove the bands when potting up so there would be no girdling of the trunks But after the first decade and many thousands of grafts, suddenly our purchased bud strips – always coming from the sole supplier in America, from South Carolina – began to fall apart after about 6-8 weeks, way before the union was secure. The supplier had altered the UV properties so that they would decompose much earlier than before, a fact that they initially denied. Later they admitted to the changed formula, probably on advice from their attorneys, because other Northwest propagators were simultaneously griping about their product. It turned out that rose growers were by far their largest customers, for after six weeks their buds were already secure, and they preferred the short-term strips which eliminated another manual task. We panicked of course, but to save the crop we went back to all grafts and secured the union by applying masking tape over the rubber strip, another manual task to add to our cost. In recent years the South Carolina firm went out of business, or at least their budding-strip division, and our only option was to purchase graft bands from Germany. So far they appear more long-lasting, so we'll see if we ever have to use masking tape again.

Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood'

Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood'

A second experiment will also involve the same Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood', and the same grafter will execute another 100 grafts, but in this case we will not de-leaf the scions. I tried that method thirty years ago and the graft-take was the same as when we laboriously removed the leaves. I discontinued the practice, however, because I didn't like a cluttered look in the greenhouse, and I didn't like the smell of moldy, decomposing leaves. We'll try it again anyway, as maybe Jordan will have a different perspective with the results.

 

A third element to the experiment – our control – will be to graft another 100 Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood' the exact same way as before, i.e. including mask-taped grafts with scion leaves removed.

The message to Jordan is obvious: Go ahead and challenge me and my theories, and never completely trust what I say. Find out for yourself, and maybe down the road when I'm long gone, you'll look back and chuckle at this Old German and his senseless beliefs, just as I do now with the stubborn Old Dutchman I used to work for. I'm different than the old Nether-head, however, with his “wooden shoes, wooden head and wouldn't listen” approach to horticulture. I look forward to progress and company improvement, and Jordan will have an opportunity to prove that his college horticulture degree wasn't a waste of time and money.

Anyway, the foregoing propagating sketches are not intended as a prescriptive recipe for how to graft, but rather an insight into what has been successful, or at least successful enough to sustain my 48-year-old career. Please Jordan, grab the baton and take off!

 

Indeed, “Happy days are here again

               The skies above are clear again

               Let's sing a song of cheer again

              Happy days are here again.”