rough, emergency grafting

[planthelper]

hi!

i don't come here so often, but i can assure you that, i love cacti almost as much as plants.

a couple of times now, i had to regraft some loph to peres grafts, and the first time i did, i was pretty drunk, when doing the "emergency" graft, which this time, i used echinopsis as the bottom.

being out of it, probably reduced my cutting abileties, to that of a person, who doesn't use knives often...

but the graft took without any hickups.

moral, regrafting is easy and ought to not be avoided, if needed.

if the loph is a bit soft and it would be (having lost it's rootstock) the two cuts don't even need to fit perfectly,

as the soft tissue will "squeeze to shape".

all that is important, is that both of the "rings" match in size, and are aligned as good as possible. again, mature individuals seem to be very forgiving, in this respect, and secondly, good downwards pressure to keep the "union" perfectly in place. i like to just put, washers, nuts, or little flat stones on top of the loph, instead of panty hoses or rubber strings, to achive downward pressure.

anyway, as this is the rough grafting topic, i think i had a good idea about holding the graft in place nicely, even if you cut badly. with cutting badly i mean, that often you dont get the cuts of the two faces, perfectly horizontal, or you even have to cut with an angle, so you are able to cut out damaged loph tissue...

what i do is, to use different shapes of wood, to build as followes.

say on the left, you have the loph graft and on the right, anything with a similar height as your graft (a brick, a filled pot, pieces of wood....) now, you place a "bridge" (piece of wood) onto the two "pillars" and put weight ontop of the spot where the loph is located. as weight you can use small flat stones or pebbles.

do writte this down, and to read this, is difficult comparing to just, doing this setup...

but once, you know what i mean, you will know where the advantage is located.

sorry, i'm not able to priovide a pic atm.

hmmm, all i try to say is, don't avoid doing grafting,

don't be afraid of your first graft, and the bigger the pices involved the easier the task might be.

"thay shall not be afraid of grafting",(spoken with moses voice)

and don't lay off the task of regrafting if needed, as it's easy, and your lophs will thank you for it!

[The Deb-One-Amine]

Thanks Plant Helper I shall Not Fear Grafting Now Thanks Heaps Your Crude(nasty) Way Of explaining it hit home cheers buddy

[mutant]

Nice topic. I will be regrafting a lopho that fell of its pere. Probably on Harissia, which I have available currently. I will try to get some pics...

[planthelper]

for a good easy, "rough" first graft i would cut a pup of a mother.

i have seen, etiolated diffusas, where the pups become elongated in the search for more light, i say this as maybe, etiolation could be used as a tool for harveresting pups.

to visualize this, an etiolated mothers pups will be much easier to cut off, and aswell might hasten the whole prozess overall.

sorry for sidetracking, if you graft a small pup, say of the size of a thumbnail, you can use just a flat stone or nut (thread nut) to weighten down the loph, if, even centrical objects with a hole in the middle fall off, than you either have to re cut, or maybe use the "bridge" methode.

if one is not carefull, the top of the loph might, have a slant, and when one tries to fix it, it could get even worse, specialy for a beginner, as the loph gets smaller and smaller....

so if you build a bridge and use a tounge depressor sized piece of wood as the bridge, you might be able to get a good tight union even if the cut's left you with a loph with a sloping top.

another very important thing is, to have always an abundance of pedro pups ready, to be grafted onto.

this is where small pedros are more important than big ones.

but even seedling grafting ought to be tried out, without any fear of dissapointment,

when i started out, i thought, those people doing grafts and stuff, are trained, and i wan't be able to do it,

but i was wrong, and wished i would not have ever put it off.

go on than, do your first, darn, didly, dinkumm, loph graft!

[Moses]

"thay shall not be afraid of grafting",(spoken with moses voice)

i had to emergency graft when having nothing for stock so-

literaly pulled out the ground two small trich-grandiflorus stood them in a bucket

pinned two small pieces of lop to each with a spine from eileen

wrapped the top of the stock with glad-wrap to make a small greenhouse on the top

and anyone here that has a lop-ceaspitose from me can testify that it worked out fine those two grafts eventually gave me about 60 clumps of pups.

[planthelper]

good one, moses.

i hope other people will tell us of how easy it was to do, there first graft, or emergency graft, even though not beeing well prepared or skilled.

just do the grafting thing, do it now, you will be rewarded!

[mutant]

i have seen, etiolated diffusas, where the pups become elongated in the search for more light, i say this as maybe, etiolation could be used as a tool for harveresting pups.

this is very true and spot on. Grafted lophos tend to get very flat, so that finding big/wide enough stock can be tricky when you don't keep much wide grafting stock or you don't want to hack your trichocerei.

*So maybe consider regrafting your lopho-on-pere on something else before it gets too wide [mine was wider than normal due to splitting too]

I would also add that even for relatively experienced grafters not having done such a large scion [sure it can be 'easier'], can feel like you're a newbie again.

BTW, I failed my first emergency graft [lopho head had fell of pere stock] I regrafted it on harissia, lopho was very wide and taping it was shitty. I then beveled the lower part of the lopho scion and tried again on myrtillocactus. And I have awful success rate on myrti, for some reason... this time pressure is weights, which I find very practical in some grafts.

grafting rules, spread the word ;)

Edited September 22, 2010 by mutant

[kindness]

first emergency / give it a go graft for me was with a loph' caepistosa that had outgrown its peres rootstock. I decided to grow give it a chance to produce it's own roots... but not before cracking off a pup, (nice roundish one), sharpening one of the peres I had in the grow cupboard, (old style like a spear sort of thing) and jamming the lopho's butthole onto that spikey landing pad, I gave it a good push in and left it.

I really didn't think that it would take... but it did. Thus I had another loph caeap' on a pere's.

:

[kadakuda]

my first grafts ended in sad, painful horribly cruel misery.

plant helper, you are 100% right, do it now...better to gain the knowledge/experience BEFORE you need to do an emergency graft...

[mutant]

hey do you know any impalement graft photolog?

I wanna see how the stock is prepared.....

[kadakuda]

no diff than a flat cut except the way you cut the stock. a reverse v graft. to be 100% honest, i find it more trouble than its worth...and growth isnt any faster. but thats just me

[planthelper]

i forgot to say that, for pups to be formed elongated with the help of etiolation, it's aswell important to keep the nutrients up. most lophs in horticulture don't get enough nutes, thats my guess.

fertilizing your loph too much, naturaly is a very dangerous possibilety, so one has to work with minute fertilizer givings (cacti fert if prefered) to avoid overfert'ing (they are sensitive to fert?!) but aswell totaly lay off from fertilizing for long periodes.

another thing i wanna say is, that, seedling grafting onto peres, is very easy aswell, once you have read thru some of the writte ups with concentration.

work as sterile as possible,

get all your paraphenalia ready and in top ship shape (sharp razor, etc.),

get your workload set up proper before you start,

and try a dry run of the actions of grafting and placing the graft's into the humidety chamber.

a "dry run" stopps us (not only the newbie) from "stuffing up" right away, as for example, you might find for example "it's hard to put the grafts into the chamber without knocking or touching the siction or/and graft.

but even with the delicate micro graft's the same rule applies,

don't be afraid of just having a go with your first graft!

[planthelper]

that's what i do now, with emergency grafts.

[planthelper]

this pic shows you how deep the tissue of the pedro and the loph, has sunk over 24h.

no wonder why, many grafts, like this fail, because the shrinkage, involved.

but if you re cut after 24h, the result looks promising!