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Grafting curiosities · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today we're going to continue talking
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  about grafting and some of the unusual quirky grafts that can be made.
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  So the first one here is what's called a family tree.
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  In apples you can buy trees that have got different varieties of apple grafted onto them.
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  Sometimes this is done because you need a pollen donor to form good apples and
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  if there's none in your area then you need a pollen from a different genetic source.
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  Or you could just decide you want granny smiths and
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  you know pink ladies and golden delicious
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  on one on tree they don't tend
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  to perform very well but they are they are available and
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  they are something you'd see in a sort of plant catalog
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  seed catalog grapes are always
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  grafted for winemaking in vineyards
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  that's because in the 19th century
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  there was a disease a root aphid i think
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  it was phylloxera and that attacked the roots
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  of standard grapes and so grapes are
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  only on their own rootstock in one area in like
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  i think in chile everywhere else they're grafted and some people
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  said this affected the quality of the grape i highly doubt
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  that because as i said the features don't
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  transfer from the roots to the shoots very rarely and
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  so grapes are routinely grafted and they
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  have a rootstock cherries as i said before they're
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  what's called top worked where the root stock
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  and the first sort of six foot of the tree are
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  the rootstock and then the top foliage is
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  the ornamental sort of like weeping one so in in like japan they're very popular
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  obviously for their spring festival grafted cherries hops i've read a report.
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  Once i think the way hops and cannabis were grafted because in the same family
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  where hops being the the rootstock but i'm not sure.
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  How accurate that was excuse me
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  there's there's something called interstocking that's a
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  curiosity where sometimes certain varieties
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  are not compatible so you can't graft them
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  but if you get another variety and put that
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  in the in between the two of them what's called interstock then
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  the rootstock is compatible with the interstock and the interstock is
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  compatible with the scion and happy days so
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  in apples and pears interstocks are are
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  used for certain varieties there's something
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  called hot pipe grafting where you put a hot pipe around this the graft union
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  and that improves the the grafting capabilities so that's something to look
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  at electrical conductivity now and this means where you you know you you measure
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  the resistance between the scion and the root It's stuck,
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  and apparently that drops dramatically once the cells have formed their successful union.
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  So rather than having to open up the wax or the sealant, you can actually just
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  measure the electrical conductivity between the two.
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  And when it drops dramatically, you know that they've formed a successful union.
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  Union. Another curiosity is cacti.
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  Cacti, you can be grafted and you'll see them on sale in places like Ikea.
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  You'll see grafted cacti, one on top of the other, like a red cactus on top
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  of a green cactus. And some people might think that looks amazing.
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  Other people think it looks tacky as anything. So each to their own.
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  If you like grafted cacti, then get going.
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  Also, why that's interesting is there's a there's
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  a type of cactus or a plant in the cactus family i think it's called
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  parescia and it looks like a normal plant it's
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  got leaves like normal shaped leaves and it's what it's what
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  cacti evolved from and you can actually graft that onto
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  cacti and so it's i think it's a bit more cold tolerant
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  i think it grows in hills in
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  mexico could be wrong on that one though i'm not an expert when it comes
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  to cacti but you can't graft with cacti
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  is euphorbias that look like cacti
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  and you'll always know a cactus because cacti
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  have their spines always sit on a little
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  little cushion and euphorbias
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  they come straight out of the stem so he and
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  they have tox toxic wax inside them
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  so you need to be careful euphorbias not only going to spike you they've
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  toxic wax in them and so or in latex
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  so cacti can be grafted onto other cacti
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  but they can't be grafted onto euphorbias which look
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  exactly the same because they're from africa and not
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  from the americas and then finally occasionally
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  you get something called a chimera and obviously
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  you might have heard of chimeras they happen in mice and.
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  You know even in humans where the cells mix
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  and so you don't get hybridization when it comes to grafting you'll never get
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  a hybrid forming but you will you can occasionally get a chimera if you're very
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  lucky and that's where the cells mix together and form a new plant composing
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  two genetically distinct cell lines. And so.
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  The best example of this is something called Adam's laburnum,
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  where it grows as one plant, the leaves all look the same, but every now and
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  again, yellow flowers form.
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  And then on another branch, pink flowers form. And it just looks absolutely bonkers.
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  And there are loads of examples of chimeras in plants that have developed from
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  somebody getting the graft union and somehow the cells have merged as they've grown.
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  And so you could try and attempt it, but you'd have to be very lucky.
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  To get a chimera forming.
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  But yeah, if you think you can, then certainly in certain strains that might
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  be beneficial, it might be unusual, and you could potentially sell them for a lot of money.
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  Adam's laburnum is not a cheap plant to buy, I don't think, and you struggle
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  to find a lot of these chimeras.
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  So that's been grafting. There are lots of different techniques.
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  There's something called budding, where you graft on a tiny little bud onto a larger plant.
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  But yeah, there's lots different techniques for grafting and it's used a lot
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  in fruit crops for mass propagation or where you need a good rootstock. Thank you very much.