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Download the Grafting Chapter
The Grafting chapter of the Facilitators Manual provides the detailed instructions (and support materials) you need to implement the mobilization meeting. Download the chapter here.
Summary
Goal Farmers will learn and practice appropriate grafting techniques for fruit trees in their Forest Garden. Learning Objectives1. Learn the concept and benefits of grafting.
2. Identify desired characteristics of a tree to use for scions.
3. Learn how to prepare scions.
4. Learn common grafting techniques.
5. Learn how to care for grafted seedlings.
Venue and timing This module should take place at the lead farmer’s or a participant farmer’s Forest Garden, once seedlings reach the correct size for grafting. Relevant Technical Manual Chapters Before this training event, the facilitator should read, review, and thoroughly understand the following chapters and sections in the Technical Manual:- Chapter 4: Seeds
- Chapter 6: Fruit Trees (Grafting section)
- Identify fruit trees on or near the host’s farm that can be used as a source for scions.
- 7-10 days before the workshop, the host farmer prepares scion branches (3 for each participant farmer): removes all leaves for 20 cm down from the terminal bud to promote swelling of the buds.
- Inspect nursery to check if seedlings are the correct size for grafting (i.e. when they are around a year old or at least the thickness of a pencil).
- Draw cross section of stem on flipchart paper.
- On the day of the training event, collect two sticks for each farmer – one about 1 cm thick and the other about 2 cm thick and .5 m long – from living trees for farmers to practice making grafting cuts.
- Seedlings (3 per participant)
- Sharp knife or utility knife (one for every 2 or 3 participant)
- Alcohol or bleach for disinfecting the knives
- Electrical tape or other weather resistant tape
- Plastic (transparent and thicker plastic is best), sourced from a grocery bag or polyethylene tubes (tree sacks) to use for binding (often used in tree nurseries)
- Grafting compound (optional, if available), such as tar or beeswax; if beeswax is used, be sure to have the necessary tools in place to warm the beeswax to liquid form.
- Rubber Bands (optional), often a cheap and effective way of keeping the cambium layers of you graft in tight contact.
- A selection of fruits from the market
- Side Grafting
- Crown Grafting
Agenda
Opener: How do we find the perfect fruit tree? (30 mins)- Discuss characteristics of a high quality fruit tree
- Discuss market benefits of grafted fruit varieties
- Discuss the characteristics of a good scion source
- Demonstrate how to prepare and collect a scion
- Farmers practice preparing and collecting scions
- Demonstrate local grafting techniques
- Demonstrate side graft
- Farmers practice grafting on seedlings in nursery
- Review the steps
- Discuss aftercare of grafted seedlings
- Debrief grafting practical
- Practice grafting on sticks and agroforestry trees
- Collect scions and graft them onto your fruit tree seedlings
- Follow-up
What you need to know
Whether you intend to sit the FG Pro certification exam, or lead Seedling Propagation module extension activities, you must be able to answer the following questions to succeed.Seeds: quality, collection, extraction & storage
Seed quality
- Why is seed quality important?
- How can you tell if a seed is likely to be good?
- What are characteristics of parent trees that are good for seed?
- How can you increase genetic diversity in your stored seeds? Should you harvest seed from fruits that come from the same tree? Should they be from trees that are near each other? Why or why not?
- What are desired parent characteristics for seeds of different products?
- Why do you use local varieties of fruit for seed?
Seed Collection
Seed Extraction & Drying
Seed Storage
Grafting
Grafting: what it is, benefits & disadvantages
How Does Grafting Work
Scion, budwood, and Rootstock Selection
- What characteristics of an adult tree come from the scion or the bud?
- What type of stem do you collect a bud from? Where on the stem do you collect the bud from? What characteristics do you look for in a bud when collecting it?
- What do you look for when choosing which scion to graft to your seedling? What size should your scions be? Width? Length?
- Should you collect scions from flowering trees?
- What characteristics of an adult tree come from the rootstock?
- What characteristics do you look for when selecting rootstock for grafting?
Tools and Materials
Bud Grafting
Scion Grafting
- Name two techniques for grafting scions.
- How do you make the cuts for a side graft?
- What do you need to do to form the union for a successful graft?
- Why do you wrap plastic around the graft? How do you check to see if you have a good seal with the plastic?
- In the side graft, when do you remove the terminal bud? Why? Why do you remove all but a few leaves above the graft?
- How do you prune the seedling after removing the plastic? When? Why is pruning important for a grafted tree?
- How do you care for grafted seedlings? How will you know if the graft was successful? When do you remove the plastic and tape?
I don’t have words rather than EXCELLENT work