Exciting new project! (grafting)

I was running around the local forest last autumn looking for decent oaks and accidentally ran across a super tight witches broom on a Pine. Today I was at the same place looking for the same thing when I remembered the witches broom and decided to look for it. As i found it I discovered that winter had taken its toll on it and it was in a sorry state. Fortunatly I found a number of living shoots which I took and raced to a friend of mine that has been grafting conifers for more than a decade. Long story short, he took a couple of shoots but also gave me some stuff so I could try for myself (which I am going to do of course). Any hints and tips other than Brent Walstons excellent grafting video on Youtube?

Images will be added tomorrow!

Best regards
Emil

I've only grafted pines, from a witches broom on a Scots Pine, succesfully once. I followed the advice in Dan Bartons book. It worked well for me.

I enjoy grafting, too. I'm trying a few types of grafting to pines, junipers, maples and hornbeams. A book I highly recommend is The Grafter's Handbook by R.J. Garner. It's published by the Royal Horticultural Society. I refer to it constantly.

Here's a sample of one of my grafting projects. I's blaauw's juniper grafted to san jose root stock. I started applying scions in 2007. After a year, some shoots have died, so, I applied more. This year, I'm going to let the blaauw's grafts grow unrestricted. One of the things that bonsai has taught me is patience...

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Kev Bailey wrote:I've only grafted pines, from a witches broom on a Scots Pine, succesfully once. I followed the advice in Dan Bartons book. It worked well for me.

Great! Do you have any pics?

Regards
Emil

Since you took shoots you'll probably be doing veneer graphs or oblique wedge grafting.
The key parts are to match the cambium exactly, graft when the shoot is dormant and the tree is just wakign up and keep the shoot hydrated.

I cover this in my book

This is my succesful Scots Pine graft. It was only succesful for three years unfortunately. It decided not to overwinter in the fourth.

Thankfully the parent witches broom is still there so I can give it another go sometime.


It was a 1 year old shoot inserted into a long shallow V cut on one side of the "trunk". I bound it with raffia and sealed with grafting wax. The pic is in its second year after grafting.

Kev, could you elaborate more. I did a search on 'witches broom' so now I know what they are and what is likely to cause them. Did you use the witches broom as the scion or stock? Thanks.

The scion is the witches broom.

Regards
Emil

Yes Carolee, Emil is right. This is the way that many of the dwarf forms of plants are originally found. Someone spots a witches broom, which is a mutated part growing on any plant. There are arguments that they are caused by insect damage, physical damage or virus etc. Whatever caused them, they often exhibit very different traits from the parent. Things like needle length, compactness of growth etc. Each witches broom is still potentially a new horticultural find, but many are very similar to ones that have already hit the market.

I used a two year old Scots Pine seedling that I had grown and side veneer grafted a piece of the witches broom into the side of it, low down. This is so that it could be a suitable candidate for bonsai as the graft union would eventually be invisible at the soil line. The top of the original seedling can be seen sloping to the left in the photo. After two years, once I was hopeful that the graft was secure and healthy, I detatched the original top. I don't know if this was what caused its demise, or some other unknown. It just turned brown and crispy in the spring, much to my disappointment.

Incidentally, collecting the scions was problematical.
The witches broom is the dark shape, top centre in the photo. The climber is a good friend who is a better rock climber and younger than me!

Well, I grafted the Pine this evening the way Brent does (which was also the way my friend did it) but the results were so poor I didn't want to save any evidence for posterity so no pictures. If it, against all odds, would make it I'll post an update later this summer. I have to say it was alot harder than I thought because the shoots were so small and there was not much material to make the v-shape. The needles are approximately between 6-8mm (0.24"-0.32") so if the grafts I did or the ones my friends did makes it I'll have great material for shohin and mame pines...

Thanks for the replies!

Regards
Emil

Hope your grafts succeed Emil. With practise we can all progress. And with needles that short it is worth a bit of experimentation!

Kev, thank you for a very informative answer, and the wonderful picture of the tree, witches broom, and your friend the climber! I now aspire to being fortunate enough to find a witches broom.

Good luck Emil, keep us posted.