Propagation: Propagating/Grafting Roses, 1 by Stake

Stake wrote:
G'Day All
When I said with PVC (Poly Vinyl Chloride)I meant PVC budding tape which comes on rolls similar to sticky tape and is available from some Garden Centres or Hardware Stores. Actually any thing that you can wrap and tie will do the job. Rubber bands are often used and I have used boot lace, fishing line or just string, these all have to be removed after about 3 weeks or they will strangle the growing plant. Rubber usually perishes and falls off and sometimes the PVC will break other times it needs to be removed and the Buddy Tape just stretches until it breaks and is soft enough for the bud shoot to burst through if need be.
With the vermiculite I meant for the new Graftling to be placed in a container and covered with vermiculite but I can see nothing wrong with wrapping the graftling in a plastic bag containing the vermiculite. Any moisture holding material can be used like sawdust etc but vermiculite is in some places easier to get than sawdust but more importantly it is sterile thereby reducing the risk of rots. The answer to question of why not make the cutting longer and avoid the neccessity of grafting has several possibilities.
First the bottom piece is called a rootstock the top piece a scion. In many cases the desired plant will not root or the roots that are formed are so weak that the plant never becomes a healthy well grown specimen. In other cases the rootstock is used to over come soil born diseases or soil conditions such as water logging/ poor drainage or in some cases a drought tolerance that the desired plant does not have.
Re growing lots of grapes I'm now retired but yes we grew a fair number of vines for the commercial growers and interestingly, where a rootstock was needed, they were selections of your American native varieties that are either immune to or very resistant to a lot of diseases that the European vines are not.
The photo is of a patch of young grafted Table Grapes on one of the American Rootstocks.
Regards Stake