My experience with propagating plants in college.
A picture of one of the successful tomato grafts.
Photo credit: Matt Green
For my degree in horticulture one of my required classes to take was plant propagation. This was one of my favorite classes throughout all of college and I feel like I really did learn enough to be confident in propagating on my own.
The biggest propagation lab we had involved combining different root stocks and scions of tomatoes. The data we were collecting from this lab was to help out a grad student’s thesis which was creating new hybrids of tomatoes. In order to graft the different root stocks and scions together we had to do some cutting. With a sterile blade I cut the root stock around 2 inches above the ground and cutting the top 3-4 inches of the scion.
After the preparation is finished it was time to join the two separate plants into one. I had to cut a V into the top of the root stock while cutting the bottom of the scion into a flat edge. Then the scion would fit into the V cut of the root stock. The next step was to cover the area with a para-film to protect and keep in moisture around the injured portions of the plant. Then we had to place the tomatoes into the mist house for 2 weeks which allowed the plants to heal.
Not all of the trials were successful. Some of the root stocks never took to the scions or they grew too much to produce any edible fruit. We had a couple different combinations grow and thrive which was really cool to see. I was able to create a new hybrid of tomato and at the same time help out someone with their thesis.
This learning experience gave me enough know how to pass on the knowledge to other students. Last semester Pi Alpha Xi put on a public propagation workshop which I helped run that was free of charge. We taught them the fundamentals that I learned in this propagation class and was able to educate others in plant propagation.