Once your Stock plants are established, they should grow well with few problems. Keep the soil moist to slightly dry. Water them during dry periods, once or twice per week.
The stock plant should be healthy and well branched to ensure the health of the new clones.
Using a sharp clean knife, take a cutting 3 or 4 inches in length from the top growing tips or vigorous side shoots.
Getting Started with Stock Plants
You can buy seedlings, but stocks are easily grown from seeds. Sow indoors 6 weeks before your last frost, or before the onset of cool fall weather.
Then remove a similar area on the stock plant. The two wounds must be held closely together. Don't move them or there is a risk of loosing the graft, and wrap the budding tape firmly around both stems.
This requires a laborious process of hand pollination of flowers of stock plants grown in the field. Afterwards each developing seed head must be covered with a little cloth bag to catch the seed as it bursts from the capsule in June.
Detach a leaf from the stock plant. Slit its veins on the lower leaf surface. Lay the cutting, lower side down, on the medium. New plants will form at each cut.
Cuttings are taken from field grown stock plants that should be replaced annually. Cuttings should be placed in a well-drained growing medium with a pH of 5.8 to 6.5.
* The process is simple--select a healthy, moderately vigorous plant growing in full sunlight as the stock plant--the source for the cuttings, ...
Sour orange or rough lemons are the most common, but any hardy variety of citrus trees will do for rootstock when grafting a lime tree. The rootstock plant should be young but at least 12 inches tall.
Organic plant material is not grown with synthetic fertilizers, synthetic pesticides or sewage sludge.
Organic plant material will not use genetically engineered stock plants or radiation treatments.
1 for initial potting; John Innes potting compost No.2 for potting on; and John Innes compost No.3 for final potting of stock plants. Composts like this, which are soil based, should be stored in dry conditions and used within a month of purchase.
 See also: Plant, Flower, Water, Growing, Bloom
  
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