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The Corroboree
shallen

quick question

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Hi there

this might sound like a silly question but,

out here were I live prickly pear is growing all over the place (well its a weed out here) and they seem to be growing rather

quickly so I was wondering if they could be used as a viable rootsock for other species of cacti

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You can indeed :-)

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i read the pads make good eating too but i know the fruits can be to die for...

,tried em yet?

is it opuntia ficus indica? {barbory fig}

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i have, they are full of seeds but they are very flavorsome never see any birds on em tho. starving man would be happy to eat em.

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I was walking home hammered when I tried one of the fruits and then I ended up with a spine thingy in my gum that I needed tweezers to remove

the spine kinda ruined the experience for me :blush:

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Yes I hear that all sorts of opuntia can be used as a grafting stock

Especially for seedling grafts.

The vascular core is closer to the edges with the pad shaded opuntia.

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I've never had much success with Opuntia spp as stock.

I've tried several different species and the results were sub par on all of them. The scions take to the Opuntia no problems but they never grew for me.

I took photos of the stock after I cut it to identify the vascular bundle on some and they seemed to be aligned correctly. If you take a pic & play around with saturation levels on photoshop or something similar the vascular bundle can be seen very easily.

Some people have good success with them but I won't do it again, I've lost too many good plants that way. I'd look for some peres or a nice fat healthy trich to use as stock - even a cheap bunnings trich.

Edited by Sally

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My experience has been the same as Sally's using pads, I'd be interested to hear more from people who had success with them. There was a tek described somewhere about using O. compressa seedlings to graft other seedlings to it. I bought seeds, germinated them, and never got around to grafting...

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I seen people grafting tricho seedlings to them, they exploded

It looks really cool because it was possible to fit 3 or 4 seedlings on a single pad,

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