How To Get Big & Thick Rootstock

Grafting Preparation: Rootstock

How To Fatten Up Your Hylocereus Rootstock For Best Grafting Performance

Up above is the current picture of one of my largest grafted Echinopsis. It was a huge Echinopsis hybrid started from a sad looking butt graft, but the factor that differentiate the vigor is mainly from rootstock. While other half of  Echinopsis are grafted on Cereus during this time and another half on Hylocereus yet few are as good as the graft done on big Hylocereus rootstocks.

Thus, I would like to share how I prepare my extra thick and big Hylocereus rootstock. Bear in mind, you need to have a separate Hylocereus grown for fruit production in order to do this. Hylocereus taken from grafting offsets or grown as feral will be short, thin and full of spines.

I will use 'to be pruned' shoots from the mother plants.  Usually, I will let them grow to a certain size while taking off their spines regularly. When they hit the right size, I will top off the actively growing shoot and leave them on mother plants for 1 to 3 weeks. The pointy tip will be fatten up and may look caved in, but worry not; as long as you cut young shoot it will remain soft and suitable for grafting.

What if you dont have any Hylocereus grown for fruit? Grow one. All the process to get them start to fruit and throughout the lifespan, you will get tons of sideshoots available to grafting. And believe me, they are very big.

Today harvest, around 7 to 8 pieces of rootstocks taken from 5 poles of Hylocereus. Other than the 7 inch shortest among them, the rest are more than 15 inches. Usually, I leave them up to 12 inch long but this batch is selected to be used for expensive Echinopsis graft later.

They are spineless too, sometime I take a good sideshoots that are not prepared if I saw any. Just have to removed the spine before rooting.

Spine removal helps a lot in growing extra thick rootstock, they will root and fatten up but could not grow any shoot, so they are full of energy to blow up the scion through the roof. Plus, they have no expiry date while rootstock with spines intact will be useless once they put up sideshoots and grow woody.

Here is the top view of Hylocereus rootstock that fatten up on mother plant collected today. As you can see, it is thicker than ordinary Hylocereus offsets taken from grafted rootstocks. Obviously, this kind of rootstock made grafting easy and pushing scion growth better.

This is an example on taking nicely growing offset and removing the spines before rooting. My method of removing spines is same for growing rootstock on mother plant or after cutting it right of the bat.

I use knife and specialized scissor for it, depending on whatever in my pockets. But the scissor is really helpful, it might be one of mankind greatest inventions so far. Easy to use and helpful in dealing with sunken spines.

Now we are ready to root these rootstocks. I use local topsoil, unlike the arid loving cactus, Hylocereus is more into tropical mix of growing media and climate. Plus, I save tons of time but using single growth media for this purpose.

 If you are planning to graft in large number, you better grow them in group per pot or polybeg to save space and time. When the are well rooted, you can choose to graft as they are or move them into individual pot. Plus. Start from tallest to short rootstock, you will thank me later.

Now we are done with rooting, in few weeks, this batch will be ready to be grafted. Off course you can graft when they are reddish tender age and without root, I have done that a lot and find that the union does not last long and limited in term of growth rate. Having said so, it is suitable for newly germinated seedling graft as you need small and tender rootstock for young scion.

Below is my recent graft of fully variegated Echinopsis hybrid on huge Hylocereus rootstock.

Now, to end today write up; I would like to share a link to my grafting video using the Hylocereus rootstock.

https://youtu.be/xVVXy4Vnys0

https://youtu.be/JyN2ML98dDs

Thanks for reading guys.

Happy cactusing!

Cactus Graft: Utilizing Healthy Scions For Grafting

GRAFTING ECHINOPSIS SCION PUPS ONTO OPUNTIA ROOTSTOCK

The basic is quite simple. You have grafted a good amount of cactus in the past, maybe 3-6 months ago and now finding yourself to be dealing with pupping Scions and lots of waiting rootstocks laying on the floor.

Yes, that is very common once you started grafting. Cactus grafting often boost the scion to great size and if you are lucky, it comes at ridiculous rate of growth. If you are luckier; the scion will remain growing as a single head, which most cactus grower prefer for but some do otherwise because they want to replicate for more clones.

Having said so, things often go the other way around; grafted scion may pups like crazy and in some cases  up to abandoning the main stem growth. If you encountered this situation, usually pups removal solve the issue if the situation is not too late.

My situation is that I'm having too much time during Covid19 pandemic that the unneeded pups can be used as scion for grafting. They are a lot, I did around l20 grafts a day and might took me a week to deal with all the pups and will end up with cleaner old scion and tons of new grafts.

For our sharing today, I'll throw some pictures of Opuntia grafts and the mother plants. Opuntia graft is the easiest as you only cut the scion, rootstock and hold them together. The sap of Opuntia is very good and retaining moisture over the union plus extra sticky.

Here is the mother plants, 4 months old Echinopsis variegata grafted onto thick 1.5 feet tall Hylocereus rootstocks. They are lower in variegation compared to my early grafts, thats why they grow far faster than the already fast growing Echinopsis variegata grafts. The pups next to mother plants are what they used to be 4 months ago, the big Hylocereus rootstock also the main contributor to the massive growth plus I'm growing them in tropical region.

I'm very sure that if we select 100% variegated pups over time they are more likely to continue growing fully variegated but there are also chances that they may revert back to early ancestry patchy variegation. But if we are talking about their next pups as pupping generation, selection throughout many pupping generations may end us with pure 100% variegated plants that even their pups guaranteed to be fully variegated too.

Despites that, in today sharing; historically I went with more green and very slight variegation as a start on this batch. Their pups end up with some fully green and the rest are variegated but on lower percentages. I do not plan for fully green revert batch but if they do happened in the future, I will use them for rootstock due to their size and growth.

Let what is in the future unravel later shall we. Now I will share the basic step in grafting Echinopsis pups onto Opuntia rootstocks. 

Find a nicely grown Opuntia pads/cladodes, better if they shed the tiny leaves which indicates that they are sturdier that newly emerged shoots.

Chop chop. That's a razor sharp knife with exchangeable blades and I'm grafting outside with stones as chopping board lol.

Cut the rootstock, I prefer to wedge the edge a bit so that the scion does not move much when united.

Wrap with plastic wrap and held with rubber band to secure. Nothing hurts you more than wind or rain knocking your grafts if left unprotected.

Now, lets see the mother plants with cleaner appearances and hopefully grow better than before, although to be honest even with lots of pups they are still the fastest growing in the collection here.

The bigger pups hurts a lot lol. Their spines are sharp and hard although not mature yet. I'm kind of glad when the scion get sunken areoles because these spines going to hurt a lot more if matured. Another group of pups from other mother plant gave me more than 20 grafts today.

Big sized 2 months old variegated Echinopsis

These are Opuntia grafts made 2 months ago and some are a months old, I replaced the failed graft with variegated Echinopsis. The early grafts are from Lobivia and Echinopsis swapped with a friend.

The only 2 months old variegated Echinopsis. Comparatively, it grown many times than original size before graft.

Looking at the bigger picture, Opuntia is a good rootstock and would fit well with Echinopsis. And rather than throwing away your scion pups, its better to graft them or at least root them. 

Alright, that is it for today, I will try to write and post more and hopefully they internet coverage does not go crappy again.

Happy Growing Cactus guys!

Cheers.

Cactus Graft: How To Perform Saving Graft Using Cereus Rootstock

Cactus Surgeon In The Making

Performing Saving Graft

Using Cereus Rootstock

On A. Ornatum Kikko

Our Patient

This is a degrafted and rooted newly bought Astrophytum ornatum 'Kikko'. It is not mentioned where the source of this cactus but from looking at the way it was grown, usually it came from either Taiwan or China.

It was a nice looking specimen sized ornatum 'Kikko' and I really wish to use it for breeding. But things get the worst turn possible, basal rot starting from the corking part of the ornatum. My best bet is that this guy is out of gas due to long shipment as it was not watered, only rooted in low moisture dirt. Plus, it is lighter than what I expect from this size of cactus.

Despites putting out lots of new root, it rot and leave me no choice but to perform saving graft using the unaffected ribs. The real challenges are performing graft using ornatum ribs and grafting using Cereus with skinny ribs.

In view of that, I would like to share how the whole process was performed.

Surgery Objectives

• To preserve the line of A. ornatum 'Kikko'
• To secure a good number of successful grafts
• To ensure the union lasts and not further affected by rain or fungus.
• To end with good scion growth and long lasting rootstock

Methodology

• Graft is perform on Cereus rootstock
• Rootstock is still on mother plant, removing the whole union and place it in the dark might increase success rate but I did not have the time to do so
• The union surface is increased by attaching scion vertically
• Scion is prepared to match flat surface on rootstock graft cut
• Scion is held using common grafting tape
• Potential water entry from the top is covered using grafting tape

Step 1

The only apparatus used. Rubber band and plastic wrap is not practical in performing quick and mass grafting with this kind of scion.

Step 2

I cut the top part of rootstock then made a vertical cut to greatly increase union surface. Another horizontal cut helps too in adding union surface plus will hold the scion in place.

Step 3

Cut the scion to match rootstock's vertical and horizontal cut

Step 4

Time to match the cut on both scion and rootstock. Make sure the scion is well matched with root stock that none of them is exceeding the top cut. This is to ensure that you can cover both using grafting tape later.

Step 5

Usually I never stop once the tape is rolling, but for the sake of taking picture I stop right on where the tape is enough to hold the graft. Then I resume taping the whole thing like grafting fruit tree. As I made a vertical cut, they are prone to rain entry risk. Covering the top solve this, all left is to wait for result in a week or two.

Conclusion

I am totally used to cactus death and rot, so I made this critical decision with consideration on the failure risk and the expected result that I want. I would rather graft this scion than cutting the whole plant into a third of what is was and then risk rooting it. From my observation, cutting and rooting the ornatum posses greater risk as the core of it is weak and dehydrated compared to the ribs.

I will update the result on next week. Hopefully some of the took.

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