Grafting vegetables (watermelon and cucumbers)

 Grafted vegetables are not much common, at least this practice does not belong to traditional farming practices here in my country. In fact I believe that most peoples do not know that anything like this is even possible.

This blog is depicting cucumbers, but the actual reason how I got into this are watermelons. Growing watermelons here in eastern Slovakia, on latitude 48° is not that difficult but neither is trivial and we can only envy people who live closer to equator, no matter from which side.

I'm not sure if we can count on three months of good growing season here. And this is point where the story starts.

Yes, there are seedlings and we are using them, but grafted watermelons are higher level.

I watched quite a lot of YouTube videos, and concluded that there are multiple ways how to graft watermelons:

1. Removing one cotyledon and connecting watermelon's stalk there - this is described in this blog
2. Doing a hole between cotyledons and inserting side-cut watermelon's stalk there
3. Joining stalks of squash and watermelon below of cotyledons

I tried all methods and think first one might be best, but YouTube videos claim that other ones are good too.

What we need

Squash seeds (future footstools)

There are many kinds of squash, but it is strongly recommended to use Cucurbita ficifolia and this is what I am using. I am not sure that regular gardening shops keep them but I easily found an eshop that offers it.

Clips

This is probably even more obscure and difficult to get. I found them in the same eshop, where the seeds for a squash. On Amazon I saw them too and various types. But sometime shipping fees are bigger than costs of clips, so pay attention.

Also, they are needed only for method #1 and #3

Sharp knife

Or similar tool.

The rest

All other fixup is as usual, pots, substrate, a normal place for seedling and some temporary shadowed place for short period after crafting. And seeds of plants to be grafted, of course.

HowTo

The images are self-explanatory:

Timing of seeding

Just seed your watermelons one-two weeks in advance before seeding the squash. The watermelons should be strong enough. And they grow more slowly than squash.

Timing of grafting

Both plants should have some growth behind them, the squash should have first regular leave of about 3 cm and cucumber/watermelon should have second regular leave growing. So roughly the squash should be one week after sprouting and watermelon about two weeks. I believe especially the top plant should have some "body mass" to be more resilient and have more energy to coalesce.

Shadowing after grafting

You need shadowy, high humidity place and not warm place. At least for five days and then only gradually acclimatizing to normal conditions. So maybe you will need multiple such intermediate places. I noticed that grafted plant looks ok when in shadowy place, but is not able to draw enough water if in more aired, drier environment. Just be gradual, they need time. Can take few weeks till plants will be ready for outdoor conditions.

Footstool branching - new growth on the squash cotyledon

This can happen, it depend on how precise was your cut, but is no problem, just use sharp knife to gently cut it off.

Taking the clip down

I do not have exact advice here, but I believe not more than 1 month is needed. But when manipulating with the seedling afterwards keep in mind that the point of grafting might be fragile.

Conclusion

I must say this spring is the very first spring I did this, so I do not even have full season follow up about how they managed the summer and so on. Also my loses was quite big, I estimate I lost about 3/4 of grafted plants, but considering it was my fist season and I had no personal advisor and never saw it, I consider it a success and good lesson for me.