By Mitch LiesPropagators who produce many

different cultivars say that budding is the industry standard for top-quality ornamental tree production.

The technique is hard work, grow-ers said, but it delivers results on even hard-to-propagate cultivars.

Growers interviewed for this story said they use the technique on about half their shade and fruiting ornamental trees. Carlton Davidson of Carlton Plants in Dayton, Ore., said his nursery uses budding for an even higher percentage of its products. “It is approaching prob-ably the 60 to 65 percent range,” he said.

During the heyday of the commercial tree industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Carlton Plants was budding close to 2 million trees a year, with production in commercial fruit trees and ornamentals.

“It was common to bud 15,000 to 20,000 of one cultivar,” Davidson said.

Why budding?Growers who choose budding over

other forms of grafting and propagation have several reasons.

The method helps ensure shade

or fruiting ornamental trees will develop the traits a grower desires and, more importantly, the market wants. In cases where a cultivar’s rootstock is susceptible to dampness, cold or disease, budding onto a hardy rootstock can help ensure tree survival. And in the case of some cultivars, budding is the easiest, most cost-effective and, in some cases, only way to ensure a high success rate.

“As tree producers, we like rooted cuttings from tissue culture, but not every plant lends itself to rooted cut-ting,” said Graham Anderson of Surface Nursery in Gresham, Ore.

“In some cases, budding is the most economical method of propaga-tion,” he added.

Mike Coleman of Arrowhead Ornamentals in Hubbard, Ore. has found that making rooted cuttings often is a less expensive alternative. “But there are certain plants that don’t do well on their own root, so those are the ones we bud,” he said. “If it was possible to do everything on its own root, it would be less expensive for us, but some things just aren’t going to work.”

Cost is important when choosing

Growers are fond of this simple,

though laborious, tree propagation

method because it’s cost effective and highly successful

Budding love

Above: A budder cuts a chip bud from a scion of All Season’s Sugarberry to

insert into a rootstock. budding is hard work, growers said, but it helps ensure

trees develop desired traits. Photo by grahaM anDerSon / Surface nurSery

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a propagation technique, said Mike Reihs of John Holmlund Nursery in Boring, Ore. “But it is more important to have a tech-nique that works for the plant,” he said. “Otherwise you can’t grow the plant at all.”

In the case of cultivars with root systems that show poor survival rates, budding has emerged as the primary propagation method.

“You’re able to choose certain root-stocks to bud onto that may be relatively sprout-free, or more hardy, or more tol-erant of wet conditions than the cultivar being produced,” Davidson said. “When you get into your stone fruits or crab apples, that becomes important.”

budding techniquesAccording to Davidson, Carlton

Plants uses budding to propagate “a good selection of shade trees, but also flowering varieties, such as crab apples,

pears and cherries.”While greenhouse budding does

occur, most budding is done in the field, where the bud of a desired cultivar is grafted onto a small rootstock about two inches above the soil surface.

The two primary forms of budding are chip budding and T-budding, which is also known as shield budding.

Chip budding involves making a smooth cut into understock, taking out a chip and replacing it with the bud of a branch.

T-budding involves splitting open the bark of the understock and inserting a bud into the open bark.

“It used to be the tendency was to T-bud everything,” Anderson said. “That has gradually been replaced by chip budding. It is a little bit faster, and you get a good stand.”

Both budding techniques involve

wrapping the bud tightly to the understock with a rubber band or plastic wrapping material. Wrapping is done immediately after the grafting to prevent the introduc-tion of air or moisture, and to encourage the cambium layers to grow together.

A budder inserts a chip bud from scion wood into a rootstock of Celtis occidentalis (Hackberry). The chip bud is then wrapped tightly to the rootstock to prevent the introduction of air or moisture and encourage the cambium layers to grow together. Photo by grahaM anDerSon / Surface nurSery

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Reihs said Holmlund Nursery uses field budding because of the high success rate and because it is economical.

“Budding is a very cost-effective way to produce many varieties,” Reihs said. “First, a seedling (understock) is lined out in the field,” he said. “You let it grow, then bud it right there in the field.”

Contrast that with grafting done in a greenhouse situation, which requires greenhouse space for potting the plants and caring for them before they are ready to be lined out in the field. “There is a lot of overhead cost,” Reihs said.

Holmlund Nursery primarily uses chip budding when budding plants, although T-budding is still used on Norway maples. The cost of both meth-ods is about the same, Reihs said.

The physical toll budding takes is another matter, however.

Some growers use a budding cart, which allows workers to lie prone on a landing just above the soil and move from one plant to the next.

Reihs said the budding crews at John Holmlund Nursery prefer to work without a cart.

“It is bending over all day,” he said. “It is not an easy job, but if you want to grow the variety, you need to do it somehow.”

Budding by cart is still hard work, Anderson said. “You are resting all your weight on your chest and knees. But at least you are working in the shade from the cart, and the scion wood is kept cooler in the shade. I think it is easier on your back [than budding on foot].”

Whether by cart or on foot, budding involves employing teams that include a lead person doing the grafting and a sec-ond person doing the wrapping or tying.

According to Davidson, a top-notch crew contracted specifically for budding can bud up to 6,500 trees a day. “That’s under ideal circumstances where you aren’t switching cultivars,” he said. “We also utilize our own employees to do budding. For them, they are looking at 1,000 to 1,500 a day. They are skilled individuals, but they don’t do it year-round as their trade.”

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The full-time employees tend to obtain a higher percentage of take, or success, Davidson said, and they are uti-lized when the nursery is budding smaller amounts of any particular cultivar.

The nursery pays contracted bud-ders by the bud, versus paying its workers by the hour, he said.

When selecting understock for bud-ding, the most important consideration is to choose understock that is compat-ible with the cultivar being budded.

“Some cultivars can successfully be budded onto species that are within the same genus or even different genera within the same family,” Anderson said. Still, Surface Nursery prefers to graft bud onto understock of the same spe-cies whenever possible.

In some cases, finding a good propagation method has proven dif-ficult. Some plants are scarce precisely because the industry has yet to find a good way to build supply, Reihs said.

“The determining factor on whether you produce a plant sometimes is simply if you can propagate it or not,” Reihs said.

An example of a plant that is diffi-cult to propagate is Forest Pansy redbud: “They are very difficult to bud in the field, graft in the greenhouse, or field graft,” Reihs said. “And it does not do well as a rooted cutting.”

Reihs estimated the success rate for propagating the redbud ranges between 40–70 percent — well below the success rate for Norway maples, which typically runs 80–85 percent, and crab apple, which typically runs 90–95 percent.

Because demand is high for the red-bud, the industry continues to work on developing a propagation method, such as tissue culture, that can work.

“People are looking for another way to get that plant propagated,” Reihs said.

And where there is demand, he said, the Oregon nursery industry tends to find a way to meet it.

Mitch Lies is a freelance writer who has written about the nursery industry for Capital Press and other publications. He can be reached at mitchlies@comcast.net.

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