Tree of the Week: January 16th, 2024
When life gives you lemons, add oranges! It’s a special tree of the week as this one is in the backyard of Yosef, one of our engineers! In our all hands meeting, Yosef brought up that his lemon tree (Citrus limon) he has had in his yard for years has all of a sudden started growing oranges too. Hank asked for a picture of the bottom of the tree and figured out that it had been grafted. Did you know that most fruit trees sold today have been grafted? In the simplest terms, grafting is connecting one tree to another, such that they fuse and grow together. Fruit trees are grafted because it is often the only way to replicate them. However, grafting fruit trees also leads to rootstock suckers, which is exactly what happened in Yosef’s case. If the rootstock is left to grow, it will probably eventually produce fruit, but its fruit will probably be sour or strange in some way. The root suckers can eventually take over. They shoot up very fast, grow taller than the top branches, shade them out and kill them. Share your grafted fruit trees in the comments!
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