How to graft carambola? The latest technical method tutorial

Carambola is a fruit native to China and is often exported all over the world. Because its appearance resembles a five-pointed star, it is also known abroad as star fruit. It helps digestion, treats skin diseases, and also has excellent tonic and health-care functions. Many fruit growers, when planting, in order to improve the plant's disease resistance and increase yield, often use grafting methods to cultivate plants and increase profits. Below, Qinnong.com brings you the grafting method for carambola. Let's take a look.

1. Selecting the rootstock

If you want to graft good saplings, there must be certain standards for selecting the rootstock. The rootstock seedlings are required to be more than 30cm tall and have a stem thickness of more than 0.7cm. In addition, when cultivating rootstock seedlings for grafting, management must be strengthened, especially in terms of water and fertilizer, loosening soil and weeding, pests and diseases, and pruning. Through these processes, the rootstock seedlings grow neatly and uniformly and are superior rootstock seedlings.

As with rootstock selection, scions also have strict selection standards. They are cut from mother plants with good variety characteristics, strong growth, high and stable yield, and strong resistance to pests and diseases. Moreover, the scion branches cut are required to be current-year or one-year-old branches about 0.5cm thick on the sunny side of the canopy, cut to about 30-50cm, and the branches must carry green leaves and buds, which is beneficial to successful grafting. After cutting, promptly remove the compound leaves and tender shoots, then cut the long branches into two sections, wrap them well with a wet towel, and place them in a cool place. It is best to graft within 48 hours, otherwise grafting will fail.

3. Grafting time

Carambola is a tropical and subtropical fruit and prefers a mild climate environment. Apart from growing extremely slowly between winter and spring grafting, it grows continuously the rest of the time, so the grafting period is extremely long, and grafting can be done from late spring to late autumn. Experiments have shown that in the extremely high-temperature environment of the south, the survival rate of grafting in March-April is the highest, while during May-October the survival rate is between 70-80%. When grafting, try to avoid sunny weather; cloudy and rainy weather and the morning of clear days are best, while grafting at noon under high temperature results in an extremely low survival rate.

4. Grafting method

There are many grafting methods for carambola, but the most commonly used is single-bud cut grafting. First prepare the tools used for grafting, then cut off the rootstock seedling 25cm above the ground, and then begin cutting the scion. The specific method is: face the base of the scion outward, press it closely with the left index finger, cut a 40-50 degree slant about 1-2cm below the bud, then remove the epidermis on the back side of the cut surface, and place the cut scion in a bud dish filled with clean water. After that, the rootstock must be cut. At the smooth part of the rootstock after cutting, use a knife to cut vertically downward, making a cut of the same 40-50 degrees as the scion, then join the scion tightly to the cut, and wrap it tightly with plastic film. In this way, the grafting is complete. After grafting, also check promptly. If grafting failure is found, re-graft in time. When successful grafting begins to sprout, promptly pierce the film to let the buds extend and grow.

The above is the carambola grafting technique brought to you by Qinnong.com. The content about carambola grafting is introduced here. To learn more, please stay tuned to Qinnong.com.