I thought I would share how I remove parafilm from a seedling graft as a few seem interested in doing that rather than leaving it in place.
To be honest, I sometimes leave the parafilm on indefinitely as the seedling will grow through it just fine and attempting to remove it too early or on a grafted seedling that has barely taken can cause the graft to abort.
With that being said, there are times you will want to remove the parafilm.
One such time is when you intend to leave your scion on that particular stock for more than 1 year. Leaving the parafilm in place can result in the parafilm embedding int the tissue of the scion if left in place which is not usually an issue as many of us will leave a good 1 .5 cm of tissue behind when we are ready to remove the scion from the graft.
The other time it is nice to remove the parafilm is when you suspect there may be contamination to the surface of your stock as evidenced by some of your stock having growth over the covered parafilm scions. Remember, parafilm does breath, but it holds a lot more moisture than co-ban does and breathes less. My suggestion, if your grafting a seedling that is significantly larger than the ones I show here... you strongly think about using coban instead.
Without further ado...
Wakinyan attached the following image(s):
not etoliated just right8.jpg
(1,897kb) downloaded 49 time(s). moist.jpg
(1,585kb) downloaded 49 time(s). slidedownmoist.jpg
(1,729kb) downloaded 48 time(s). gentlypeeled back and eased off3.jpg
(1,050kb) downloaded 48 time(s).When I graft you graft we graft