The delicate lemon tree is more robust when placed on a rootstock as scion. Due to its frost hardiness and its weak growth, the bitter lemon is by far the most suitable rootstock. With our instructions you can easily graft your seedling yourself. However, be sure to pay attention to hygiene, and the cut surfaces should not be touched with your fingers.
Why refine?
Like many other citrus plants, lemons have a fairly long juvenile phase and, if you have grown them from seed yourself, will only develop flowers and fruit in eight to twelve years at the earliest. Grafting is the best way to get your own seedling to flower quickly or to reproduce a favorite strain. The youth phase is then shortened by about half.
Prerequisites for refinement
A sharp knife, grafting gum or raffia to wrap around and Lac Balsam or tree resin to cover the cut are required for grafting. In the case of citrus, the simplest refinement is the side plate, here the refinement base and scion do not have to be of the same thickness. The prerequisite for the scion to grow is that the rootstock has a lively metabolism, i.e. it is “in the juice”. For this reason grafting only works in summer. In addition, the growth layers of scion and rootstock must lie as well as possible on top of each other.
Instructions for refinement
Before the actual refining, you must first prepare the scion:
- Choose a previous year's woody branch of the noble variety.
- This one should have dormant buds.
- Remove the leaves, leaving only the petioles on the branch.
- Using a long slash, cut the scion from the top to the base.
- Then there is a small counter cut.
- The rice is topped above the second bud.
- The finished rice has about one or two buds.
Now the base is prepared:
- Cut a straight, long section free from the trunk or a side branch.
- This should be about five inches long.
- This is where the scion will be added later.
- Remove the leaves.
- Make a cut that is as similar as possible to the scion in the exposed area of the underlay.
- The tongue of the pad should fit snugly into the counter cut on the rice.
Now you can put the individual parts together. Wrap them well with raffia or rubber bands and cover all interfaces with Lac Balsam or tree resin so that they are airtight. Usually, the individual parts grow together within two to three weeks.
tips and tricks
To grow your own grafting stock, you can collect bitter lemon seeds in the botanical gardens (ask the gardener!). Immediately remove the seeds from the fallen fruit and sow them.