Degrafting from pereskiopsis

[Plant Pimp]

What methods would you folks reccommend for degrafting a globular cactus from a Pereskiopsis rootstock? I was thinking of just cutting 1 or 2 cm below, replanting with the rootstock completely under the soil and hoping the peres reroots. It would give the illusion that the scion is on it's own roots. Then the remaining rootstock could be reused? Any thoughts?

[SaBReT00tH]

what are u trying to create the illusion for? So you can sell it to someone? I'd cut a little bit above the top of the graft, allow to callous and grow roots then plant. This would also allow the remainding bit of the graft on the pereskiopsis to pup again and continue growing, provided there is an aeriole left.

[Plant Pimp]

Sell it to someone!!?!?! Of course not! The illusion would just be beneficial for me because I don't really like the look of a big ball on a stick and it might flower faster. In fact, the graft I'm talking about is from seed that I got ripped off on. The ID was severely misrepresented. I sure as hell wouldn't knowingly misrepresent something to someone else! I was just wondering if it would continue to grow at a faster than normal rate if a few cm of stock were left on when it was replanted. Would the attached piece of stock reroot? Could the leftover rootstock be reused? I have a few seedlings coming up and I'd like to try to graft one. I am trying to conserve root stock. Cacti don't grow very fast in my cool climate so it's a slow process getting more rootstock, especially in winter. Maybe I will try both. Cut off the scion, let it calous and reroot it. When what was left starts to pup I could cut below the graft and then see if the peres reroots while completely under the soil. If it only has one pup I could compare the growth rates! Has anyone had success repeatedly using the same rootstock with different grafts? or is it better to cut a fresh growing tip?

[teonanacatl]

Ok a few things, why even cut the graft off if your just gonna reroot the peres?

Suggestion: Cut the graft off above where it joins the peres and graft that top onto a pedro. Graft on peres will continue to sprout pups so you can keep removing them and regrafting onto pedros.

If you want more peres plants just cut up the ones youve got into 5cm pieces and root them. Or buy a few more. Eventually the peres graft will go woody and that will be the end of it, cut last bit of loph off cut off woody bit and it will regrow.

Advice for peres, get some mother plants going and just take cuttings of these for grafting (when you take cuttings always leave a few areoles left so they can repup from them), how many you will need will depend on how many grafts you want to do.

[AndyAmine.]

When doing one of my first grafts I foolishly pulled off all the leaves and gratfed it very low with only 5cms or so of root stock after seeing a picture of one done that way.

I realise now that it was a bad idea for fast growth and was wondering if I should jst cut it off a cm or so under the scion and then regraft it onto another Pereskiopsis with more height and leaves?

[Plant Pimp]

Andy, I was always under the impression that the ammount of roots had more to do with growth rate than height? I've never heard of a peres/peres graft...good luck if you go with it.

Teo, the reason I was going to reroot was so the scion would be flush with the soil and be more asthetically pleasing while still having the benefits of being on a different root system. I had no idea that the peres would eventually go 'woody'. I've successfully rerooted Pereskiopsis cuttings before, but never a cutting from a 'globular' cactus, so I was a bit worried about killing it.

Thanks for the advice! I guess I will give the traditional method a go. At least then I might have a few new pups on the original, so all won't be lost if I fail to reroot the cutting.

[DoNk]

IME I've always made the cut about an inch below the graft and replanted right away. The peres will root first and then the cactus will eventually root if you plant the base below the soil surface. Just my two cents...

Edited November 26, 2006 by DoNk

[teonanacatl]

Andy, I was always under the impression that the ammount of roots had more to do with growth rate than height?

Lets think about this for a second, YES it is true the more roots you have the more leaves you can support the more you can grow. Its true for most vascular plants where the stems dont photosynthesise and the scion grows lots of leaves. Now lets apply this to cactus, still works more roots = more nutrients and water so can support growth. Next thing cacti have photosynthetic stems and peres has leaves, so well this would mean the more stem the more photosynthesis could go on. Lets think about what we graft on top, lophs, those pink gymno's etc, the surface area of photosynthetic apparatus is significantly smaller then say and orange tree graft. So a loph grafted onto trich roots with no extra trich photosynthesising would have a big root system but small photosynthetic apparatus therefore lots of nutrients but limited photosynthesis, a loph grafted to a 1m high trichocereus has same size root system as before but now has probably 50x the surface area of a single loph, so high nutrient uptake, large amount of photosynthesis but also a higher nutrient requirement, that can be fixed with fertilisation.

So really the more photosynthetic area the larger the cactus the more energy it can push into the graft. Make sense? Anything over looked?

[Siggor]

stuff

Edited December 11, 2009 by spudamore