How to graft a pawpaw tree

[Music] hello today we're going to have two professional paw paw grafters joining us out here in our paw paw orchard at piketon ohio we're here at the south centers uh the weather hasn't been very cooperative with us we had uh may weather in april and april weather in may so when we were uh scheduling our pawpaw grafting a video for today usually by the middle of may we're getting the high temperatures and the good weather conditions and that is flip-flop on us but we're going to go ahead and proceed with a with a demonstration today on grafting paw paw and like i mentioned we have dr ron powell who's the president of the ohio paw paw growth association and sarah francino who's you all are familiar with she was our master's student for a couple years working with the farmers throughout ohio and she's now working on her phd in paw paw production so they're going to be sharing with us today some of the skills some of the tools and some of the things we need to keep in mind when we go to graft our papas howdy guys i'm sarah francino and we're going to talk about the toolkit of grafting pawpaws we are using ron powell's very large grafting toolbox you don't need one this size but having all of your tools in one spot so you don't forget anything is a good idea first off let's talk about grafting knives so we're looking at different grafting knives here comparing them to a different to a pocket knife so pocket knife is double sided so it's not straight on either side and it comes to a point whereas a grafting knife is flat on one side so you can make nice straight cuts and there's different types this is the traditional fold out some blades are curved like this but again they're flat on one side and then you have grafting knives that can be a little bit bigger and they're for nicer for bigger hands but they're again flattened one side so we can make that nice cut and you need to make sure that they're very very sharp each time that you use them to craft some people also use razors or scalpel blades they can be very sharp and they only last a few uses you'll also need a set of sharp pruners to cut off the top of the tree which is probably the hardest part of grafting is beheading the tree always make sure to label your tree ron uses a pencil because it doesn't wash away like marker does marker usually lasts about three to four years but on top of labeling you also want to make a map of your orchard then coming to after you've done the grafting one of the first steps is to put a rubber around it these come in multiple different sizes and if you're it will depend on the size of the tree and the graft we usually use small to medium rubbers here and you'll also want parafilm there's also things like budding tape um but a low budget option is just to cut strips of parafilm about a quarter inch wide and then that will stretch out to about a foot because grafting is like doing surgery you want to make sure that you also have spray bottles of alcohol to spray all of your tools down this is we want to make sure we have an antiseptic environment that it's all clean so that when we do the graft that it will take and there won't be any bacterial or fungal infections and last off you need to protect yourself because grafting is done with very sharp knives and i always cut myself on my finger so either use a band-aid to put on your finger where you're going to be cutting into this is not the boy scouts like ron always says we are going to be cutting towards our hands so make sure to protect yourself and now we're going to move on to actually doing a graft on a papa tree first let's talk about the scion wood for a second this is how a professional pack says cyan would you want to make sure that it has enough moisture in there but it's not too moist so it gets moldy or anything so ron wraps it up in a paper towel and then you keep it in a plastic bag in the fridge and each stick i might have to unwrap this because it's nice and tightly packed you need to make sure that they stay nice and moist and this is a still which is a lesser known cultivar that we're going to be grafting in to our orchard today and each stick is second is first year wood correct and then ron seals them with wax on the bottom so the moisture will stay in and you can see then each of these is a bud and so you want about three to four buds per graft last year we had a very interesting growing season so our buds are very close together so we'll be it might be a shorter scion this year but some years you'll have a longer scion just depends on the year you want to count three or four buds you want to make sure you store your scion wood in a cooler or in some sort of cool space in a dark space when you're out in the field today is kind of gloomy but if you're you're supposed to be grafting a nice sunny degree 80 degree weather so you want to make sure that it stays cool and moist so we picked out our pawpaw tree here this is a three-year-old seedling that's ungrafted we'll be using the variety k wood today which is a lesser known variety so first we want to look at the tree here and determine where we want the graft we've got the cyan wood and we want to match it up now this is not going to be a perfect match up the scion one's a little small so we're going to graft right in here this is about the right diameter and we can match up those cambiums really well so the first thing we want to do is prep our rootstock you want to take alcohol and disinfect your nippers and then you want to cut as close as possible to the sides of these lower branches and take them off because we don't want the root stock pushing up vegetative growth and then you want to make a flat cut across the top of the rootstock and see how we made that very very flat the green is the phloem and right between the green which is the phloem and the center which is the xylem and that's the wood is the cambium and that's what we need to shoot for we need to shoot for the cambium of the scion to enter to go past the cambium of the rootstock we will be doing a cleft graft today next we're going to prep our scion wood you can see here there's flower buds and then there are smaller leaf buds you want to take only the flower buds off which look like chocolate bonbons and you want to leave the leaf buds on there this is because we don't want the scion which is off of an older tree to flower in its first year as much as you want fruit you need to wait three or four years before you leave flowers on your trees to graft we want about four buds but we don't want to cut the scion right there we want to cut it down a little farther give yourself about an inch or two depending on how experienced you are i'm this is one of my first graphs this year so we're going to be giving my i'll be giving myself a little bit of extra room to make sure if i make just a small mistake that i can go back and fix that with a little more length so next we're going to cut the scion right about here and then you want to make sure that you put the other piece of scion which you can use for another graft back into your cooler to keep it nice and cool then you want to disinfect your knife and place your thumb on top of the scion and you want to you want to cut a wedge and this is important that you have either a right or a left-handed grafting knife because if you're right-handed the flat side of the blade needs to be up against the scion and if you're left-handed then that would work the same way but with a left-handed knife so we're going to cut a wedge and this cyan one is a little small a little hard to do okay you want to make sure that it tapers into a nice point and you want to make sure you have that green phloem with the cambium now i'm going to stick this in my mouth to keep the scion moist and to not let more fungal or bacterial get into it and we're going to prep the root stock so you only want to cut down as far as your scion is and then you want to stick your scion into the rootstock close your knife you're going to take a rubber and this is where repetition helps because you're supposed to start the rubber off at the bottom and cross it back over and start winding it around and this is where each person develops their own little technique and method to make sure that this scion is wedged in there nice and right you want to make sure while you can shimmy it back and forth that you line up that cambium okay and we're getting to the top you want to put your finger in tie this off the top and that will keep the grip that clef that we cut in the rootstock pinch together against the scion next we want to seal both the root stock and the scion from any outside weather forces with some parafilm that we talked about earlier now this stuff is very very stretchy so you need one piece you stretch it out and it seals to itself so you have to be a little careful start with the bottom roll your way up and you want to make sure it seals over top of that graft right there you want to make sure it seals all the way over the top of the the rootstock and that you're overlapping it on the scion then you roll it all the way up the scion you don't have to worry about the buds breaking through the parafilm because it's thin enough and the parafilm is biodegradable then you want after you get to the top you want to bring it back down around and seal it off here at the bottom so we have first cut the scion wood made it into a wedge then we've cut the cleft graft in the rootstock sealed it with a rubber to keep it tight pinched against each other then sealed the whole process with parafilm the leaves should start pushing out of the parafilm in about two to four weeks depending on the weather in six months you take off the rubber and any parafilm that's left you might want to put a either some extra stick of pawpaw or a t post or even something like uh bamboo or just something to tie this to because birds like to come sit on top of new grass and they will then hurt them and tip them over [Music] you

Channel: The Ohio State University South Centers

Views: 14,152

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Id: b61ceBFte3U

Length: 15min 20sec (920 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021