Hi. My name is Dr. Charles Rohla.
I'm the pecan specialist here with The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation.
And today we're going to show you how to do a Texas inlay bark graft.
And we're actually modifying it and calling it the American bark graft by using duct tape.
Some the tools we'll use is just regular duct tape.
You might need aset of hand pruners.
You're going to need a good handsaw.
I've chosen this one because it has offset blades,
so it's going to cut a little quicker than some of the other saws.
You need a good grafting knife.
The grafting knife should have a flat blade at least two to two and a half inches long,
and sharp.
And then, finally, you need some Elmer's Glue to put on the top of your scion wood.
Alright, so we're doing a Texas inlay bark graft,
we're going to select a larger diameter tree.
This can be done on trees anywhere from an inch and a half
up to about eight inches in diameter.
Anything larger than that, your success is going to go down because you can get way too
much growth in one year and it's a lot harder to protect that graft.
We're going to select this tree -- this is a seedling.
And we're going to cut it off right here between these branches.
And we'll make one smooth cut and then we'll start our graft.
Alright, because this tree's actively growing,
we're going to make a cut on the back side through the bark
so we don't ...
Once we cut through the tree,
we don't peel the bark off the back side of the tree.
So we're just going to cut through
about a half inch into that tree.
Now we're going cut from the front side.
And try to line it up with your cut you made on the back,
but it doesn't have to be perfectly in line.
[Sawing sounds]
Now I'm just going to clean up the very tip of my cut.
And now we have a place that we can put our scion wood on to.
Then you're going to make one cut
through the bark,
down.
And make sure you go all the way through the bark.
Then you want to peel it back about just a little bit.
You want to cut the very tip of your scion wood
to remove the dried portion of the scion.
And then we're going to make our cut using our pocketknife
We're going to make our cut about two, two-and-a-half inches long.
And I'm going to remove this bud as I'm cutting.
And you want to start straight into your wood
and then twist your wrist
so you're cutting just through about of half the diameter of the scion wood.
And you're going to have a nice, flat
piece of wood that you're going to insert into your rootstock.
After you make your front cut,
you're going to make a make a small cut on the back side,
just to expose the cambium layer.
Then you're going to line your scion wood up with your first cut
that you made on your trunk.
And you're going to cut right down the side of your scion.
And then you're going to peel the bark back just a little bit
so you can start your scion wood in.
And once you start feeling it be a little snug,
use the end of your pocketknife and tap it down
so that flat piece is snug
and then this beveled edge
is still sticking above your rootstock.
Okay, now we're going to use our duct tape to secure this graft.
We're just going to tape.
Pull that tape fairly tight
around and over
your cut you made on your rootstock.
And then we're just going to push the exposed part down.
And then we will use additional tape on top
just to cover the top of our cut here to keep it from drying out.
And then one last step,
I peel half of my duct tape in half
and I'll put a little ribbon around the front here.
And if you're doing multiple varieties,
you can use different colors
so you can identify what variety you've grafted.
And this is going to cover up the back portion of that scion wood you've left exposed.
Then one last step on your scion wood is to use your Elmer's glue.
Just apply it to the tip to keep it from drying out during the heat of the summer.
The last step is to put a bird perch.
You just remove a branch that you cut off the tree.
And we're just going to tape it
so it's taller than our scion.
So whenever a bird lands,
they're going to kick off our bird perch instead of our scion
... our grafting in here.
And then you're done with that graft.
This is an inlay bark graft that was applied two years ago.
You can see where we cut the tree off right here.
And right here was our original piece of scion wood.
And so you can tell that the tree has grown quite a bit in caliper.
And we have a new start on our new variety tree with this graft.