Carbo's Grafting

All about grafting. How-to information, progress reports, show of your results.
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Carbo
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Carbo's Grafting

Post by Carbo »

I decided to start my own grafting thread since I'm going to be doing a lot of grafting as well as experiments such as areole grafting, different techniques, trying out different stocks etc.
This is my current setup, I have 4 aquariums each holding 55 pereskiopsis plants, most have scions on the now but there's still free ones. The lighting is three 12 watt 6500K led light bulbs per aquarium(the plain ones used in households, not specifically designed for plants)
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They are in these neat little pots:
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I'm amazed at how much variation there is in pereskiopsis leaf size even though they are from the same clone, but maybe they're different species? I've noticed some have small amount of wool at leaf base and some don't.
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I have just a few myrtilo's so I decided to try and graft some areoles:
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Still no signs of growth but they are getting quite fat as picture shows. Will they eventually grow?
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Shane
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Shane »

I decided to start my own grafting thread since I'm going to be doing a lot of grafting as well as experiments such as areole grafting, different techniques, trying out different stocks etc.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you do. I'm also going to do some grafting experiments, though right now I'm still in the practicing and waiting for stocks to grow stage
Still no signs of growth but they are getting quite fat as picture shows. Will they eventually grow?
I think people sometimes treat areole grafts with a hormone (I forget which one) to encourage growth. They aren't as inclined to grow as larger grafts
Los Angeles, California (USA)
Zone 10b (yearly minimum temperature 1-5° C)

Fishhook cacti are like cats, they only like to be petted in one direction
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Shane
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Shane »

I think people sometimes treat areole grafts with a hormone (I forget which one) to encourage growth
The hormone I was thinking of is 6-BAP
Los Angeles, California (USA)
Zone 10b (yearly minimum temperature 1-5° C)

Fishhook cacti are like cats, they only like to be petted in one direction
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Carbo
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Carbo »

Well, afrer a full year of growing and grafting hundreds of cacti, here is an update.

First about the myrtilo areoles, if you graft them on pereskiopsis, the areole will never grow at all, I tried grafting young shoots of myrtilo to peresk to see if the growth is absent because I only grafted one areole. They did not grow either, suggesting peresk and myrtilo are not compatible, they fuse but there's no growth. About a month ago I grafted myrtilo areoles again, but this time on hylocereus, this is the result:
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The new growth is bursting out of a single areole. This whole idea started because I didn't see a way to quickly propagate large columnar cacti that don't branch much, and I wanted to have lots of myrtilo to use as a stock.
I also did lots of grafting on hylo and opuntias:
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The level of compatibility between the scion and the stock seems to have quite a large impact on scion's growth, for example one species of echinocereus grew when grafted on opuntia pad while a different species of echinocereus did not grow at all.

This got me curious and I made a table in excel that shows compatibility between individual species of cacti and stocks used. It's still largely empty but I will continue to update it as I graft more and more. When the table has decent amout of data in it I will post it here and perhaps other members can add to it too.
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Carbo
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Carbo »

After 7 days the myrtilos have grown quite a bit:

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I sowed some seeds from either Echinocereus polyacanthus or Echinocereus triglochidiatus that I collected from the mother plant's fruit this summer, I grafted half of the seedlings on pereskiopsis and 1 of them turned out to be a mutant lacking chrolophyll:

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It had 2 pups so I grafted those on selenicereus, here is one of them now:

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The mother plant, maybe someone can identify which species is exactly as I have both the fruit and flower photographed:

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Mature fruit splitting to expose the tiny black seeds:
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Flower (it is self-fertile):
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The mutants have a very slight green tinge to them, and the spines detach at the slightest touch. Excited to see it grow further!
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hiawog
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by hiawog »

Great thread thanks for sharing
walker87
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by walker87 »

This is a great thread!

Thanks for sharing
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Carbo
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Carbo »

A few months back I was shopping in a local supermarket when I was surprised to find this:

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Opuntia ficus indica fruits! In my country you sure don't see these every day. The taste is nothing special, which is why I assume they were dirt cheap, I bought 2 packets and planted the seeds. This was in September, germination is slow and uneven but I got plenty of seedlings which are now small plants already:

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I have 2 older o. ficus indica plants but it would take ages to propagate them to a point where I always have pads for grafting, so this was a great find! Small rebutia pup I grafted on ficus indica pad grew as fast as if it was on hylocereus, I intend to use it instead of hylo because hylo really doesn't work for my climate and opunita is hardier and more disease resistant while apparently providing same growth rate as hylo. What's not to like?

I propagated some selenicereus from small cuttings to use this winter for grafting instead of pereskiopsis, I'd really like to phase out pereskiopsis for seedling grafting because peresk. has GLOCHIDS and once it looses it's leaves (which always happens here because of winter conditions) it doesn't improve growth anymore at all...so far selenicereus has the advantage of more plants taking up less space but...it can't compete with peresk. I wish there was a spineless peresk. mutant...one can dream...

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Update on the myrtilos, they're almost as big as their stock now...this is a month and a half worth of growth from a single areole, in another month I expect it to be at least double the size at which point I can detach and root them. I'll try to graft new areoles to stock again after degrafting, and see how many plants I can get from them before it doesn't work anymore.
So basically you can get a sizeable myrtilo stock ready for grafting in 2.5-3 months from 1 areole, provided you have enough stock. I'll try using different stocks other than hylo and report results, so far this is pretty impressive, didn't expect this.

Image
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Shane
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Shane »

What conditions are you growing your Selenicereus in (light intensity, temperature, and soil water)? Also, curious about the light intensity you're using for the O. ficus-indica seedlings. I can't seem to get the light right for my opuntiads, either it's too low and they're etiolated or too bright and they fry. You've gotten very good growth out of yours
Los Angeles, California (USA)
Zone 10b (yearly minimum temperature 1-5° C)

Fishhook cacti are like cats, they only like to be petted in one direction
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Carbo
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Carbo »

I use 12W 6500K 1000lm light bulbs(lumens is all that matters really). I have a light sensor on my phone and I use that to see if light is intense enough. In my experience the general formula is, anything that's below 10% of sun's intensity on a clear day is not enough for anything to grow healthy (except for some specific cases but we're talking cacti here)

So, grab any device that measures light intensity, units are not important. Just go outside on a clear day and point your device straight at the sun. My phone outside measures ~100K in lux, so 10K lux should be minimum for growing anything.

My selenicereus, opuntias and pretty much everything else is growing under the lights I mentioned. Most important thing to note is that distance between lights and plants is very important, light intensity drops exponentially as you increase distance between them. My aquariums are wrapped in aluminum foil to reflect most of the light and heat back.Ideally, when you make any growing chamber you shouldn't see any light coming from it when looked from the outside.
I have 3 aquariums which are H=30cm, L=50cm W=40cm, they each have 4 of those light bulbs(I remove the white part from bulbs because it blocks quite a bit of light), and I have a larger one that has 6 bulbs. Total power draw is 216W

Note that O. ficus indica and some other opuntias actually grow looking like they're etiolated for an opuntia, but actually even in my GH they grew like this, they grow up and up until they reach certain height, and only then they start growing typical opuntia pads
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Shane
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Shane »

In my experience the general formula is, anything that's below 10% of sun's intensity on a clear day is not enough for anything to grow healthy
Aha! So that's it! I'd tried maybe 8% and 100% before, with bad results from both (for different reasons obviously). I've actually gotten a little frustrated with growing cacti from seed in general your post gives me some ideas of what to improve
Los Angeles, California (USA)
Zone 10b (yearly minimum temperature 1-5° C)

Fishhook cacti are like cats, they only like to be petted in one direction
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Carbo
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Carbo »

Some new stocks I'm trying:

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Gymnocalyciums on E. chamaecereus. Qute a common plant. Grows fast, is's very hardy and resistant, spines are harmless. We'll see how it holds up.

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Echinocereus leucanthus, with some astros and a rebutia grafted on it. This one is interesting because it grows tubers, I think it will work well because it has apical dominance, spines are harmless and easily plucked for easy grafting. It grows quite fast, from a single seedling that I obtained last winter, I now have 80+ individual plants. Roots fast from cuttings.

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I've heard people use E. oxygona but never really tried it myself. I have 2 grafts from last Autumn and growth is slow but I think it would make a nice permanent stock.

Just an update on my chlorophyll-less echinocereus mutants, they're growing nicely:

Image
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Shane
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Shane »

Looking good! Please keep us updated on your progress
Los Angeles, California (USA)
Zone 10b (yearly minimum temperature 1-5° C)

Fishhook cacti are like cats, they only like to be petted in one direction
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Carbo
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Carbo »

I noticed a weird thing when grafting on opuntia. It seems that I get more growth if I use smaller pads or cut them down to a smaller size. Ignore the pot sizes, these were all grown in same pots and were only transplanted recently:
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Note that I have many grafts like these, I just picked these 4 to photograph. My theory as to why this is happening is that
stock grows less offsets and so more energy is diverted to scion.
I'll try a little experiment, I have some gymnocalicium seedlings, I'll graft them on opuntia pads and do the following:

-1/3 will be grafted on pads while saving as much of the pad as possible
-1/3 pads will be cut back to 1/3 of their size
-1/3 again with as much pad as possible but most of it will be buried under substrate

Don't know what my sample size will be, not sure how many pads I have laying around. If anyone had similar experiences please post them here.
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Carbo
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Re: Carbo's Grafting

Post by Carbo »

I've been having a lot of problems recently with rust fungus that ruined almost half of grafts attempted this season. Now I think I've finally come up with a solution:
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These grafts were all free of any diseases and unions were very strong. I think what's happening is that when I had them in humidity chamber, water would condense on the top glass and then drip down on plants, splashing around pathogens on open wounds of grafts. Spores also fly around in the air and the plastic covering seems to protect my plants until the graft takes.
Another solution is to have angled top covering on the humidity chamber (I use aquariums but goes for everything) so that condensation isn't dripping down but rather slides down on the side. This would require more complicated design of humidity chamber which I'm not gonna bother with.

Another thing that works even better but not with seedlings and very small cuttings, is just leaving grafted plants out in the open air, in a shaded spot. With this method the stock needs to be hydrated well and scion pressed significantly. Unions with this method were very complete, as if someone super-glued them together:
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