by Walt Edwards
Grafting to hydroponic tree?
3:59 pm in Nutrients, Plants, questions, R&D-I-Y, Seeking Advice by Walt Edwards
Please forgive me if my netiquette is incorrect. I’m new to this…
The inspiration: I’ve been going to the same Christmas Tree Farm for 20 years. It’s a sustainable farm, and we cut the tree ourselves, but we ALWAYS leave the bottom rung of branches on the tree. Why? Because then the tree completely regrows itself by next Christmas. Every year I’m amazed that these tree stumps grow back as much as 10 feet in such a short time.
So I’m wondering what if instead of starting a hydroponic garden from scratch each season, what if we grafted our plants onto the branch of a “permanent” tree root base that provides all the nutrients for the plants without having to grow a new root and leaf system from scratch? Wouldn’t this have the same effect? 10 times the growth? Longer growing season? Bigger yields? Simpler irrigation?
I’ve heard that local hero, Luther Burbank, grafted 144 plant varieties onto a single apple tree! So it seems like it should be possible. But this is not my area of expertise and I don’t have enough time to research it myself this year. Feedback? Thoughts? Suggestions?
Great to have you, Walt. This is just the kind of thinking I love. What if . . . .
I had a glimmer of this thought too when I was nerding out with a friend who has an orchard.
I think you are on to something. There are many tree varietals prized for their roots system and truck morphology because they are great hosts for other plants. I’m sure there are plants whose root systems are perfect for thriving in hydroponic systems and could support grafts of another varietal.
I’m not sure whether or not it would be worth all the effort for a lot of people to do it this way, but it seems like a very fun line of research and, in my experience, when you’re having fun you figure out great stuff!
Here’s what I like to do– scour the academic research through the library or on the internet for something along these lines. I can usually only understand about 10-20% of the article but its generally enough to bring back here and start to make a proposal to other folks.
I started a group for anyone who wants to join us in some grafting experiments here: http://our.windowfarms.org/groups/grafting-experimenters/
I’ll make your post sticky on the front page and maybe we can build a little team around some research and testing of this!! Fun!!