Designer plants

Attractive flowers with fragrant perfumes are the fabulous creations of Mother Nature – well, most of the time. Around the world, plant breeding companies are busy giving nature a helping hand to create fabulously coloured roses or more productive fruiting trees. But what you may not know is that you can have a go at a bit of amateur plant breeding yourself! By getting to know simple propagation processes such as grafting and cross-pollination, you can have fun creating a special plant of your own.

When two become one
Grafting is one of the most intriguing forms of propagation, as it uses the best qualities of two different plants to create a single super plant. It’s commonly used in the nursery trade as a way of giving flowering and fruiting trees more robust rootstock. In fact, many of the common garden citrus trees we grow, like lemons, oranges and grapefruits, are grafted onto the roots of Citrus trifoliata. So take a cutting of that slow-growing camellia, graft it onto a more productive rootstock, like a vigorous Camellia sasanqua, and in no time you’ll have a blooming beauty.

The birds and the bees
Birds do it. Bees do it. And now, you can do it, too! Cross-pollinate, that is. The process of cross-pollination, also called allogamy, simply involves the transfer of pollen from the stamens (male sexual organ) of one flower to the stigma (female sexual organ) of another. To do this, you’ll need two flowers – a ‘seed parent’ and a ‘pollen parent’ – and let your imagination be your guide. You could mix the colours of your two favourite roses or even grow the world’s juiciest tomato. You can never be 100 per cent sure of what you’ll get, but it’s fun experimenting!

Cross-pollination

You’ll need
- Parent plants (pollen and seed parent)
- Secateurs
- Paper bag
- Clothes peg
- Freezer bag

Step 1
Select a flower (here, a rose) from the pollen parent that’s almost, but not completely, open. Carefully remove all the petals.

Step 2
Choose a flower from the seed parent that’s fully in bloom. Again, carefully remove all the petals.

Step 3
Trim away the stamens from the seed-parent flower, using secateurs or a small pair of scissors.

Step 4
Cut the flower from the pollen parent. Holding it by the stem, apply the pollen
to the sticky stigma of the seed-parent plant, gently brushing the flower back and forth like a paintbrush.

Step 5
Protect the seed parent using a paper bag sealed with a clothes peg.

Step 6
Check back in the next 4 months to see if your rose hips have ripened.

Step 7
Cut the rose hips in half, remove the seeds and store in a plastic freezer bag in the fridge until you’re ready to plant them – spring is ideal.

Test-tube flowers

Many of you will have sown seeds or taken a cutting from your mum’s begonias, but did you know you can also grow and multiply plants by cultivating them in a test tube? Commonly called micropropagation, or tissue culture, pieces of young plant material are grown in a glass container on a nutrient gel called agar. They’re allowed to grow and divide before being transferred to the greenhouse.

Grafting

You’ll need
- Sharp knife or scalpel
- Plant to be grafted
- Plastic bag
- Rootstock
- Budding tape

Step 1
Prepare a sterile and sharp knife or scalpel by passing it back and forth through a flame.

Step 2
Take a cutting of about 20cm from your desired plant (here, a citrus) and immediately put in a moist plastic bag. You can choose either a single bud on a stem or a multi-budded stem.

Step 3
About 15cm above ground, make a downward and slightly inward cut into side of the rootstock.

Step 4
Remove cutting (also known as a scion) from bag, trim the stem and carefully make 2 inward-slanting cuts at the base.

Step 5
Loosen the bark of rootstock slightly and insert the scion.

Step 6
Line up the outer green layers (cambiums) of the plants and, when they fit perfectly, bind them with budding tape. After a few weeks, the graft should begin to take. Remove the tape as soon as you see the graft has completely healed.