Plant grafting : Purpose, Types and Procedure

Plant grafting is one of the most popular terms that a greater percentage of professional gardeners know about. It can merely be considered as a technique of placing a particular portion of one plant into another stem or root of a plant to make them grow together. Using this specific technique, you can make the tissues of two individual plants get merged and joined.

To be more specific, the main purpose of the technique named grafting is to connect two different plant segments. Grafting has already become one of the most popular modern gardening methods as it will seem really pleasant to gardening lovers to see multiple plants having a growth as a single entity.

What is the purpose of grafting?

• Grafting helps to create more plants from that one plant you have.
• Grafting can help to bring control on the size of a plant that is too small or too big.
• Grafting techniques are also used to bring a change in the appearance of plants.
• Improving the root anchorage is also possible through grafting.

There are certain types of grafting that every gardener must know about. Some of the most mentionable types of grafting are

• Side grafting
• Approach grafting
• Cleft grafting
• Flat grafting
• Saddle grafting
• Splice grafting

Process of grafting

Grafting is not a big challenge if you can carefully do it step by step with a bit of guidance. All you need for grafting is a scion and a root. Then you need to insert the scion carefully into the stem or root in a specific manner so that you can ensure that when these two are bound together, it allows the exchange of necessary minerals as well as water. Choose a narrow scion so that you don’t feel much challenge while you are inserting it.

One more important thing to keep in mind is, choosing plants from the same species is an effective trick for a successful grafting because it’s not biologically impossible. On the other hand, choosing two plants from different species for grafting may not always work the way you want.