新疆棗王の苗が昨日の夕方に届きましたが、坐骨神経痛の痛みがひどい日だったので今日の午後まで放置してありました。お昼ご飯のあと全身を温めて痛みを緩和してから植え付け作業にとりかかりました。もう11月で玄関前の通路には黄色の食用菊が咲き始めています。
The Xinjian jujube plant arrived yesterday afternoon, but I had a particularly bad day with my sciatica, so I left it unopened until this afternoon. After lunch, I warmed my whole body so as to alleviate the pain and started planting the new tree. I feel I have lost a month and now I see the chrysanthemums in front of my porch are in bloom.
When I got the plant out of the box, it was a little disappointing to see the thin stem.
せめて根っこはちゃんとあるようです。
At least, it had decent roots.
植え付けにとりかかってびっくり。最初は挿し木苗かと思いました。でも、サイトでは「接ぎ木」だったはず。そこで継目に当たるまで土を取り除いたら、最初の地上部である赤い矢印よりもかなり下のほうに融合点がありました（黄色矢印）。しかも台木がいやに細い。
構造的には、黄色矢印から下が台木。黄色～緑色までが接ぎ穂。緑よりも上が穂木から芽吹いて成長したもの。
When I started unravelling the roots, I first thought that they had sent me a plant developed from a cutting. However, the shop site did say it was a grafted tree. So, I kept removing the soil around the stem. At last, I found the fusion point shown by the yellow arrow, which was way below the original 'above ground' point shown by the red arrow. Equally surprising was the size of the root stock (below the yellow arrow).
So, structurally, the part below the yellow arrow is the root stock, the part between yellow and green arrows is the original scion, and the part above the green arrow (including the red arrow) is the new growth that budded out of the scion wood.
私の見立てが間違っていないことを確認するためにホース水を当てて継目の状態をチェック。何と、サドルグラフティングです。動画などでデモは見たことあるけど、実例を見るのはこれが初めて。輸入苗でしょうか。いずれにせよ、これほど台木が負けている例は見たことない。
To confirm that my reading was right, I washed off the soil around the fusion point. It looked like a saddle grafting. I had seen the demonstration in an overseas video how to do saddle grafting, but this was the first time seeing an actual sample. This is probably an imported plant. At any rate, I have never seen such a feeble, incompatible root stock.
植え付け完了。地上15cmくらいまでの向きとその上の部分の向きが異常に異なっていて、根元近くをまともに植えると、支柱なしでは地上部が地面に対して30度くらいの傾きになりそうだったので、支柱にガチガチに縛り付けて矯正中。
At last, planting is done. The direction of the plant 15cm above the ground v.s. the rest of the plant was so different that I had to tie the plant to props at several points. However, by spring next year, I am sure that the tree will be looking much better.
黄色矢印の継目はしっかり土の上です。
I also made sure that the grafting point was above the ground.
