Want to experiment with seedlings to grow a miracle crop? It turns out that you can combine some plants with others. Our consultant Andrey Tumanov, host of the programs “Fazenda”, “Garden”, “Our Garden”, “Village Hour”, “Field Work”, tells how to do it correctly.
17 May 2016
Everyone knows that trees and shrubs can be grafted, but few have heard about grafting vegetable plants. Even the most advanced gardeners do not know about this simple but effective operation. What is it for? To increase the yield, cold resistance and growth period of plants. Plus, vaccinations are great fun and great fun if they can.
The simplest example. Southern guests, watermelon and melon, do not tolerate a drop in temperature and stop growing at +8 degrees. And the pumpkin, on the contrary, grows well and is filled. It also has a powerful root system, several times stronger than that of a watermelon or melon. If we graft a melon plant to the pumpkin root, we get more fruits, which, moreover, will ripen until late autumn. You can also graft on a zucchini, it also has strong roots.
First you need to plant two seeds in one pot, a scion (watermelon or melon) and a stock (pumpkin). Best of all – gymnosperm pumpkin, unpretentious and stable, with a good root. After about two weeks, the plants will sprout, it will be easy to distinguish them, the pumpkin has larger cotyledon leaves. It is important to catch the moment when the “flag” of the first real sheet appears.
How to do it
We’ll need a piece of a safety razor, an awl, or a toothpick. Tools must be clean, treat them with alcohol. If your vision is not perfect, prepare glasses or a magnifying glass, the work will be delicate, you will need to see small details. We carry out the operation very quickly, its success depends on it.
Carefully remove the real leaf on the pumpkin with a razor. Cut off the leg of the watermelon. We take an awl and very carefully make a puncture in the place from which the growth point was just removed – right inside the stem, by 0,5-1 cm.Work very carefully so that the stem does not break. If damaged, it is already a failure. Next, we take the cut off leg of the watermelon and sharpen it with a razor from two or three sides like a tiny peg. Gently scrape the skin at the bottom of the stem with a razor in several places. After that, we insert the stripped leg into the puncture, positioning the parts of the plants so that the cotyledonous leaves lie in a cross. A drop of juice may seem, that’s okay. We make sure that the plants fit well into one another. Then you need to water the soil and cover the pot with a small jar so that there is a lot of moisture under it – the wound surface should not dry out. After some time, you will see the result – if the scion dies, the vaccine has failed. But more often than not, everything goes smoothly, and the scion starts to grow. This means that you can open the jar, and then remove it altogether. Such grafted seedlings subsequently grow superbly and quickly overtake their unvaccinated counterparts.
If you correctly grow these plants together, you will get two in one – both tubers and fruits. You should not count on a rich harvest or especially great taste, rather it is entertainment and testing yourself as an experienced gardener. Here we will use a technique called ablactation – convergence fusion. Plant two plants side by side. Then slightly peel the skin on one and on the other, apply in these places and tightly tie it with a thread to each other. Cover with a jar. If everything went well, the plants will grow together. After that, cut off the leg of the rootstock (potato), and the top of the scion (tomato).