my astrophytum hate grafts for some reason

[wamilton]

I've been grafting a few seedlings on pereskiopsis over the last few months, I have had a lot of success with lophphoras that are 1 month old. However, when I tried grafting some 1 month old astrophytum and ariocarpus seedlings, my success rate has dropped significantly. I basically have 1 out of 10 astrophytum asteria successes and 2 of 8 successful ariocarpus successes.

They all seem to fuse fine, but then over the next few days, they lose their greeness and deflate. Any idea what I am doing wrong? here is my process that I use with all my seedlings:
1. have month old seedling
2. either use a pere that hasn't been watered for a few days, or one I just cut
If I don't do the above, some times the pere pushes too much water out the top and that pushes the seedling off
3. standard clean cut with a razor on the seedling and the pere, push them together to get rid of air bubbles
4. no pressure, just leave it in a humid container for 3 days
5. if the pere was fresh cut, leave it in water to root before planting

by day 3, the fusion is usually as good as it gets and the seedling looks fine. then the deflation happens. As I mentioned, this technique has worked great for lophs but astrophytum and ariocarpus really don't take.
here are some pics of the failed grafts:
They come out looking like this:

then after a few days:




Here is the one astrophytum success:


FWIW these astroyphytums are super kabuto, so I'm not sure if that makes a difference.

[MikeInOz]

If you stop grafting your problems will be solved.

[Hanazono]

G'morning wamilton,

There is grafting affinity of cacti. The grafting affinity of Pereskiopsis and asterias including super kabuto is "good".

According to your photo which failed grafting shows exposed vascular bandole completely on cut face of stock. You can not get any successful grafting results in this case. The alignment of stock and scion is not right.

I attached a sketch for your information.
1: scion (asterias seedling)
2: stock (pereskiopsis)
3: vascular bandle of the scion
4: vascular bandle of the stock

If 4 and 3 could meet evenif it was partially, you will get a successful grafting result.
In case of seedling grafting, it may be impossible because Pereskiopsis is woody structure and vascular bandle location is near skin as shown "B".
Fortunately the scion is a seedling. Vascular bandle of seedling is not developed completely yet and so it is possibel to graft if you could align scion as my sketch.

When the grafting result was good, cut fact of stock "A" is lifted and it becomes higher than the skin of stock.
Since the grafting result is varied, I keep scion and stock for 10 days in high humidity.

I can not see any character of super kabuto on your last photo. This size of super kabuto should show the character.

Frank

[wamilton]

Hi, Hanazono, thank you for the detailed response. I'm aware of the vascular bundle alignment, and have aligned them in my grafting attempts. I think what you see in the picture like this:



that is not the vascular ring, that is the dried skin of the pereskiopsis wrapping inwards.

I can not see any character of super kabuto on your last photo. This size of super kabuto should show the character.

I agree, the seller simply labeled the seeds as super kabuto, so they might have made a mistake there.

Any other ideas on what might be the issue?

[Tom in Tucson]

G'morning wamilton,

There is grafting affinity of cacti. The grafting affinity of Pereskiopsis and asterias including super kabuto is "good".

According to your photo which failed grafting shows exposed vascular bandole completely on cut face of stock. You can not get any successful grafting results in this case. The alignment of stock and scion is not right.

I attached a sketch for your information.
1: scion (asterias seedling)
2: stock (pereskiopsis)
3: vascular bandle of the scion
4: vascular bandle of the stock

If 4 and 3 could meet evenif it was partially, you will get a successful grafting result.
In case of seedling grafting, it may be impossible because Pereskiopsis is woody structure and vascular bandle location is near skin as shown "B".
Fortunately the scion is a seedling. Vascular bandle of seedling is not developed completely yet and so it is possibel to graft if you could align scion as my sketch.

When the grafting result was good, cut fact of stock "A" is lifted and it becomes higher than the skin of stock.
Since the grafting result is varied, I keep scion and stock for 10 days in high humidity.

I can not see any character of super kabuto on your last photo. This size of super kabuto should show the character.

Frank

[Hanazono]

G'morning wamilton,

that is not the vascular ring, that is the dried skin of the pereskiopsis wrapping inwards.

I did not refer to this photo. I referred to your 1st photo, "then after few days".

Please have a look the attached sketch. This is the top view of the previous sketch.
Since the vascular bandle of Pereskiopsis is near skin, a scion has to be set near skin of the stock.
Since the scion is very small, I set stock and scion to meet at the point "C" in practice.

The success rate of seedling grafting on Pereskiopsis should be more than 90%.

Frank

[FredBW]

So what your saying Frank, Is the Scion needs to be more towards the edge of the stock than the center. Correct?
Just trying to understand.

[Hanazono]

G'morning FredBW,

Is the Scion needs to be more towards the edge of the stock than the center. Correct?

Yes you are correct if:
1. Stock is Pereskiopsis
2. The section of scion is smaller than that of Pereskiopsis stock

I can grafte 2 mm diameter scions and so many cases are No.2.

I do not graft seedlings of Astrophytum anymore but 48 Ariocarpus seedlings were grafted in this year.
A photo is attached for your information.
Scion: Ariocarpus retusus v furfuraceus cv Suguri cauliflower, 3 mm in diameter
Stock: An off-shoot of Pereskiposis
Grafted: 9th January 2023
Taken photo: 9th February 2023

Frank

[FredBW]

Thank You