WEEK 8 - GRAFTING, STEM CUTTING & TRANSPLANTING

Hey guys! It's another week for field work in our 8th week. For this week activity, I'll be sharing about grafting, stem cutting and transplanting for chilli tree.

For this week, we don't have a morning roll call as it was only our part that conduct activities during this week. Our activities started at 8.00 a.m. that was in charge by Madam Sarah. Madam Sarah gave a brief about the activities that we will be conducted for the week.

Madam Sarah demonstrated how to do Grafting

Grafting is an act of placing a portion of one plant (bud or scion) into or on a stem, root or branch of another (rootstock) in such a way that a union will be formed and the partners will continue to grow.

We started our grafting activity by searching the bougainvillea tree to cut a different colour of their flower to another. The bougaivillea tree with a flower that we cut served as the scion that we will combined to another that have another different colour of flower that will served as rootstock Before we combined the scion, we used the knife to make the 'V' shape at the tip of the stem. We must choose the similar or a match stem size of scion and rootstock to bring the effect of the grafting. Then, we tied up the scion and rootstock with parafilm and wait for the results.

A scion

Scion and rootstock are combined

Scion and rootstock are tied up with parafilm

After we finished our grafting activity, we moved to our next activity which is stem cutting. Stem cutting is a process used during vegetative propagation whereby a piece of the plant's rooted into a growth medium such as moist soil. Consequently, the stem cutting will thrive and grow as a new plant, which is entirely independent of the mother plant provided that the conditions are suitable.

Our first step was to cut the stem with the knife and clear some leaves at the bottom of the stem to make it easier to plant the tree. Before we plant the tree, we make a hole for according to the size of the plant and to prevent the hormones attached on the soil. For the stem cutting, a rooting hormones were used to increase the root growth.

Agradix powder was used to increase the root growth

The plant were inserted into the hole

The plant has successfully been planted

With our stem cutting activity finished, we moved to our last activity which is transplanting the chilli tree.

Before we began our transplanting activity, we need to do the soil mixture which contain topsoil, sand and organic matter. The ratio for the soil mixture is 3:2:1.