i will keep the humidity high. the rest is up to Xenu.
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Looking good. Your bottom end up graft should do fine the way you have it. You may experience some slight lifting, but nothing to be worried about unless the humidity drops too much.
Your other graft... cling wrap will experience less problems with lifting providing you candled it and it was secure in all places. With that said, the main danger or concern with cling wrap the way you have it is that it may tug or pull at the graft as it is released. Be slow and careful. Did you Lock the cling wrap in place? Clothespin, twisty tie, or even a rubber band can be used for this as it may release tension otherwise. One unsightly method that works when it comes time to release is to take a razor blade and slice into the cling wrap along the side or edges of the Pereskiopsis if it appears to be too hard to pull off due to being wrapped too much... that or just have a lot of patience as you unwrap. Slow and steady.... no pulling, fast movements, etc. Again, only worry about cutting into the wrap if it does not seem to want to release and fall of on its own. Generally, this is not so much a problem with cling wrap. Looks like you put a few layers on though so take it slow when removing it.... Did I mention take it slow?
awesome thanks. i learned a couple of things here for sure.
here's what i did:
1. prepared the stock by removing some of the leaves.
2. wrapped the stock with a piece of saran that i now know was too long.
3. made my cuts leaving and places the scion on the stock.
4. held down for two minutes.
5. carefully let go and placed a 2 inch x 1 inch piece over top and pulled down on either side.
here's where i ran into some trouble: with my one hand tied up holding down the saran it was very difficult to wrap over the folded piece to secure it. next time i will definitely use a clothespin. that was the piece i was missing. also parafilm clearly has more stretch than saran.
6. both of the coco plugs were moistened up put in airtight bags and are sitting on an warming pad.
Grafting is as much an art as it is a science. You have to know the basics and look for signs of why each graft fails or is imperfect and then everything begins to make more sense. With that said, each graft you do you will learn something from as what works in the summer may not work in the winter. Another good trick when you have an unprotected graft is simply misting it from the top lightly to keep the humidity up a few times a day. You don't want to spray a seedling graft from the side as you may dislodge it or cause it to lift up. You've chosen two different styles and I think you will be pleased with both methods. Don't worry if one of them isn't perfect. These are among your first and I still mess up a graft from time to time. Applying too much pressure and not enough humidity for instance will cause your smaller scions to dry out and crush them in the process. Its always a learning experience as the more you learn the more you learn to deviate and try new things or skip steps and sometimes it bites you in the but and sometimes you learn something new.
Keep up the good work as I don't see anything I wouldn't personally do... to include forgetting a rubber band or clothespin to keep the cling wrap in place. It happens. The best thing you can do now is to apply a rubber band or clothespin gently over the piece and not worry if it dries out a bit. Remember, the more the cling wrap loosens the more surface area for the scion to loose moisture....
i tried to place them all in that container carefully one by one not bumping any of the grafts. then i gave it a couple of mists and covered it last night. i worry now if i applied too much pressure on some of the smaller ones. i really did give it some good pressure a couple of times around... not gonna mess with it now though. i would have used more elastics/clothespins but that was all i could find. i tried to strategically place them to avoid unwrapping. i hope some of them take. i put quite a few tops and bottoms on them.
that last one i thought we were talking about the opuntia.
Relax, it looks like you did very well. The few small differences in opinion and that is all they really are... are not enough to make your grafts fail. Too much pressure can sometimes damage your small seedlings and that much is true, but this is all part of the learning process. You have made excellent grafts for your first go round and I see success... not failure. You decision not to mess with them... also an excellent decision as only you know how they feel and many times the smarter decision is to simply let a graft take its course. You don't need perfect. You simply need success that you can learn from. For that matter, even failed grafts teach us something. That is why I personally like pushing the envelope of my own skills and trying out new techniques. If something doesn't work for me... I don't give up. I see what went wrong and learn from it. Perhaps my lighting was not the best, humidity was off, or I should have been more patient with a particular stock. Grafting is an art and a science. The more you graft the more your skill will grow in being able to discern what will help in your particularly growing environment and most importantly... you will know when to leave well enough alone. Your already starting to do that so your a fast learner in that regard. My hat is off to you for all of these grafts you have done on your own. I may of provided you with a little guidance, but it is you that has listened to your cacti and yourself. You've done what you felt comfortable with and that is perhaps the most important part of grafting and something that simply can not be taught.
another issue i had with the bottoms was trying to place the wrap over the odd shaped tap root. what i did was likely a mistake but i sliced the tap roots off so i could wrap them flush. I'm not sure if this act will dry out the scions too much... do you have a technique to deal with this issue?
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Your bottom end graft looks to be lifting up. It is likely that there is still some connection on the other side though so while not perfect... don't disturb it too much and the connection should grow thicker and in doing so prove stable enough to allow it to grow some pups for you. As for methods to deal with the odd rooted end. Grabbing the rooted end in your cling wrap or parafilm and holding it by that end while gently securing it to the top of your Pereskiopsis will allow you to pull down on the sides while holding your scion in place. Your doing good. Practice with inanimate objects of no account before your next attempts if you like as it will improve your skills in wrapping as there will be no pressure or time limit. Parafilm is hands down my favorite grafting material though as it sticks to itself, stretches, and breaths. You can leave it in place without fear of damaging your scion. A trick you can use with parafilm and those pesky bottoms is to place a pencil into the middle of the parafilm and pull the parafilm over the pencil to stretch it out. When you remove the pencil you will have a nice indentation that your scion bottom will sit inside of nicely. You will still have to hold it still, but it works nicely as it pulls snug and sticks to itself so if made slightly too big it will correct itself once your fingers compress the parafilm around it to hold your scion secure to your stock. Coban is better in many ways than cling wrap and worse in others. With coban you run the risk of putting too much pressure on your scion and it can easily detach a seedling as it conforms to the odd contours of seedlings a bit too well without wanting to release its hold sometimes. I feel like I may be getting you more lost than you need to be... as your grafts are really good as they are. If your striving for perfection an investment of 5 dollars in parafilm would help get you to that point a lot quicker.
the bottom graft is off completely now. it's planted in the container with the grafts that took. i will be buying some parafilm... the saran doesn't seem to breath or stick all that well. that combined with my misting blunder certainly spelled disaster. at least i ended up with a couple. thanks for the tip on grafting the bottoms. that should work nicely.
Once you've tried parafilm you won't want to use anything else. You can buy cheap rolls for grafting at about $5 dollars a roll. Or you can spend a little more and cut it as you go. If your going to be grafting on a large scale you'll want to buy the grafting tape rolls . If your talking about just doing 10 or 20 grafts each time then cutting as you go is easy enough with the laboratory parafilm. http://www.orchardvalleysupply.com/ovsstore/pc/Parafilm-Grafting-Tape-p278.htm
or if you'd rather cut...
http://www.2spi.com/catalog/supp/parafilm.php
i remember the orchid valley supply link from before. i'll try to get some of the rolls here by spring. i don't want to mess around with cutting this stuff.
Cutting this stuff is not that hard, but its definitely slightly easier and much faster when doing many grafts to get the tape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l05VBheNHr4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l05VBheNHr4)
She makes that look really easy. I will make sure to put that song on next time. i fumbled out another couple with Saran tonight... I kept knocking the scions off while trying to apply the Saran so I ended up just bagging them like before. She grafts lower than I thought you could. I thought you could only graft up near the tip?
As long as its not woody you can use it to graft and the tip is never woody so its always a safe bet. But yes, you can graft lower down than just the tip.
ok. i once watched this video where this guy said that you must always graft to a growing tip... i just assumed there was some different cells in the very tip that you needed to somehow utilize. i guess he just meant new growth.
New growth is much easier and faster to graft to in most instances. So, that much is correct. The cells are in an active state of dividing... a much faster rate than lower down and growth hormones are more concentrated there. So, yes... it is better in general to graft higher up on your stock. However, if your seedlings are too large or would work better lower down then that is always a judgment call that you have to make. Its not that you can't get a graft to work further down... just that it will tend to be slower at first than a graft higher up. Again, if the material is too woody your looking at a graft that is not going to look pretty if it does take. You don't need half of the tools I've given to you if you want to make decent grafts. However, if you utilize the best techniques... parafilm, humidity, active growing tips, etc. then your grafts will have a much higher chance of success each and every time and what is more important is that you won't have to worry about contaminants, drying out, or pulling away from the stock plant as much. Suffice it to say, I rarely listen to all of my advice, but when I fail to do so I often kick myself in the butt for not doing things the better way.
cool, that clears things up nicely. if you have already answered this I'm sorry, but i wonder how the size of the graft affects the growth rate of the scion? meaning if you were to graft to the top of a 10 foot cactus would that cactus be pushing ten feet of photosynthesis into the scion?
Root mass and quality is more important than size of the cactus for getting your grafts to take off. If the root mass is large and can take a heavy watering... that is far more important than having a 10 ft. unrooted cactus to graft on. Where you get an advantage with a 10 ft. cactus is that it has more energy to devote to getting a larger root mass faster than a smaller cactus. I imagine that is why they call it the rootstock and the scion.... as it is the root stock that is superior in size and or quality to the scion. Rootstocks may also influence the resulting phenotype of a plant. Such as when a dwarf root stock is used to dwarf an otherwise normal in growth scion. One theory as to how this works is based on the transfer of microRNA from rootstock to scion. Mind you that is just one theory. What is known about rootstocks is that somehow they can transfer traits such as greater high, shorter height, disease resistance, etc. to the scion. I don't know of any literature on the subject, but I have talked with a number of grafters and some claim that even color can sometimes be altered over time with some species over time... simply by repeatedly grafting to a stock that has the same desired color. The fact that rootstocks can influence the genetic expression or phenotype of plants/cacti has been known for a long time. One area that interests me is grafting two very closely related cacti or plants together in the hopes that their shared effects on each others phenotype/genetics may allow less compatible pollen to have a higher success rate or perhaps even help with getting through prefertilization or postfertilization barriers....
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3277459/
...so what if you had two cacti both with very well developed root systems and one was grafted at 1 foot and the other at 4 feet. would this have any bearing on growth rate? I'm trying to understand if the suns energy is captured by the scion alone or does the entire plant collect and push that energy into the scion?
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