Gardeners, Get Grafting: 2 Workshops Will Show How

WOOSTER, Ohio — Learn how to graft new plants for your garden, including new fruit trees for the coming spring, in workshops on Jan. 19 and Feb. 2 in Secrest Arboretum.

Instructor Paul Snyder, who’s a program assistant with the arboretum, said participants will get hands-on practice with side veneer grafting, will also learn the basics of cleft and whip-and-tongue grafting, and can take home the plants they create.

The workshops are the same on both days.

“The side veneer graft is nearly universal, so that’s why I focus on it,” Snyder said. “It’s also the graft I use the most. You can use it on fruit trees, which is what most people have been looking for when they’ve taken these workshops in the past.”

Start new fruit trees, more for spring

Simply put, grafting lets you combine the best parts of two plants into one. For example, you could cut a stem from an apple tree that has especially tasty fruit, graft it onto the rootstock of a cold-hardy apple variety, and produce a new apple tree blessed with both of those features.

The workshops will provide the plant materials for grafting. The lower grafted parts — called the rootstocks or understocks — will be from apple, white pine, ginkgo, Norway spruce and balsam fir. The upper parts, or scions, haven’t been chosen yet.

Participants also can bring their own scions. “In the past, some people have brought a scion from their favorite apple, sometimes an heirloom variety, and have grafted it to the apple understock,” Snyder said.

Save $10 as Secrest friend

The cost for either workshop is $35 for members of the Friends of Secrest Arboretum and $45 for nonmembers. Details and links to online registration are at go.osu.edu/Jan19Grafting and go.osu.edu/Feb2Grafting. Call 330-263-3761 for more information.

The arboretum is at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, 1680 Madison Ave. in Wooster. Wooster is about 30 miles west of Akron, 60 miles south of Cleveland and 95 miles north of Columbus.

Both workshops will be from 8 a.m. to noon in the arboretum’s field headquarters building at 2320 Selby Road on the OARDC campus.

OARDC is part of The Ohio State University and its College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.