Cannabis Grafting

Grafting cannabis is not a new thing, people experimented with grafting cannabis plants onto hops in the 70´s. This is however something that I stumbled upon while training my plants.

This picture is of a Super Silver Haze plant from my last grow. It was a bonsai mom that I trained for a long time, which included tying branches together at an early stage. One of the branches that I tied to another grafted with it's new host. The graft was more apparent from the other side but there was no way for me to get the camera into that jungle of branches.


Grafting is mostly a novelty of the plant world but the possibilities of grafting are endless, only limited by imagination. I suppose that there are three reasons for grafting; one is to fuse a scion with a host creating a multi-strain chimera in the process, the second is to graft a smaller plant onto a larger root system and the the third is to shape the plant itself.

I have been thinking about making a mother plant that holds many strains by grafting different strains together ever since I stumbled upon the works of an arborcraftsman named Axel Erlandson. Look it up, the things that he did is amazing..

People do this with apple trees and such and they said that the grafted plant produce fruit from all the species that were fused together and sometimes even new hybrids emerged spontaneously on new branches that grew after the grafting was done.

Grafting is usually done by making a transverse cut on both the host and the cutting that is to be grafted, then they stick the cutting into the cut branch and tie it all together. After that they keep ithe "wet graft" moist for several months until the "wound" closes up. Gardeners also graft saplings onto older and thereby greater root systems of different plants, usually improving greatly on vigor. This can be done with any plant as long as they are of the same family. People have even grafted tomato plants onto potato roots, creating a chimera that grows tomatoes above ground and potatoes underneath. Grafting rarely succeeds because it's such a long shot but if cannabis strains can be grafted just by tying branches together, this would be an easy and in effect low-stress way on doing it, which should have a greater chance of success.

Now I am at the point where I could give some more serious grafting a shot as I have a lot of clones to work with. As soon as I find the time I will look into this.

Kodiak said:

Grafting cannabis is not a new thing, people experimented with grafting cannabis plants onto hops in the 70´s. This is however something that I stumbled upon while training my plants.

This picture is of a Super Silver Haze plant from my last grow. It was a bonsai mom that I trained for a long time, which included tying branches together at an early stage. One of the branches that I tied to another grafted with it's new host. The graft was more apparent from the other side but there was no way for me to get the camera into that jungle of branches.

Grafting is mostly a novelty of the plant world but the possibilities of grafting are endless, only limited by imagination. I suppose that there are three reasons for grafting; one is to fuse a scion with a host creating a multi-strain chimera in the process, the second is to graft a smaller plant onto a larger root system and the the third is to shape the plant itself.

People do this with apple trees and such and they said that the grafted plant produce fruit from all the species that were fused together and sometimes even new hybrids emerged spontaneously on new branches that grew after the grafting was done.

Click to expand...

Kodiak

Apple trees with 5 or 6 varieties grafted onto wild apple root stock are available from a few nurseries. These speciality trees are popular for people setting up gardens and orchards to be self-sufficient. It's pretty cool too to walk out and have your choice of several apples off of a tree or two.

Commercially, all apple trees are 'grafts' of the desired apple variety grafted on to the host root stock which is almost always a wild apple root stock. They're much more resistant to the myriad of microbe-related problems with growing apples than are the specific cultivars grown commercially.

Grafting also allows for the orchards to shift from one variety to others as the consumer demand for speciality apples continues to grow, i.e. growing Red Delicious apples is a real fast highway to financial ruin. Growing Gala or Spitzenberg Apples will give you the maximum opportunity to make a profit.

Vineyards also deal with wild root stock for the same reasons that the apple growers use wild root stock, i.e. resistance to disease and fungai.

BTW - just for sh*ts and grins, check out the botanical name for the type of hops used to brew beers and ales.

There may be a subtle message here - plant strains that have been subjected to intense inbreeding/line-breeding development will often show patterns of problems in the commercial agriculture paradigm. There may be something in there for cannabis breeders to ponder.

HTH

CC

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=92130
:wink:

SunnyDog

Read my Post #2 - it still stands.

LOL

CC

What you describe here is a long way around to what's called 'Approach Grafting'. (Look it up on youtube) I'm convinced this is the best way to graft with cannabis as it does indeed heal very quickly. Too quickly if you're not fast enough when doing the cuts and binding together. The plant juices dry out too fast sometimes.

All of the consistent failures I've seen with grafting have all been woody stem type grafts and mainly people trying to graft a full plant onto a stick with roots on it. (Helps to have at least a few existing branches and leaves actively drawing sap through the root mass and up the stalk)

By slicing each branch (preferably SOFT new tissue growth) and then fitting them together, they can be wrapped with teflon tape. (Yes, the stuff you wrap on water pipe threads) It holds pretty well while the sap oozes out and dries around the wounds.

In about 4-5 days you can cut the original stem and the tip will continue to grow on the new host.

What I'm most interested in is this:

1) Further study and documentation of causing a vegging plant in 24/0 lighting to flower by grafting a flowering branch onto it.

2) Methods that would allow easy approach grafting of flowring branches to a plant that remains under 24/0 lighting, causing a fully mature harvest.

Cool thread Sunnydog. I remember another thread where a grower first replaced all the branches on a plant with new ones and then tried a mj face/off by replacing the "heads" of two plants. The first experiment succeeded by the face/off didn't

Yeah it seems like the trend today is to grow crops as fast as possible without any regard for the genetic vigour of the species. According to the experts, the food crops grown today have been seriously weakened by the heavy use of chemical fertilizers and selective breeding, faster crops = more money. I guess the only way to improve on vigour would be to cross the species back to it's wild counterpart or earlier stock.

I guess the same goes for cannabis. If you think about it, the genetic make-up of many strains that we grow today can be traced back to either oldschool Skunk, Afghani/NL or Haze or any combination of the three. Unless we introduce new strains and genetic material to our grows the gene pool will remain small.

This is why I had to order some of the wild strains like Khmer Gold, Lao Sativa, Thai Stick Sativa and Mazar-I-Sharif afghani that Gypsy Nirvana offered, as these strains are new stock collected from local farmers in Asia and Afghnaistan. Nivanas Travelling Thai is another and ACE seeds also carry some interesting strains like the Vietnam Black 77´, Oldtimer's Haze and Chienese Yunnan Indica.

Im going to order some African strains next and perhaps some real Jamaican and South American if I can find it.



Hydro-Soil, in response to the two points that you mentioned I will have to point out that it is probably the host that dictates how the scion will behave. Adding a flowering scion to a host will most likely not trigger flowering for the entire plant, or so I believe.

Your second point on the other hand is more interesting. If you could graft a flowering clone onto a host and then have only that branch flowering under 24/0 while the rest of the plant remains in vegetative state, that would be something.

We are however talking a lot of science here. How will the auxin transport and other hormonal systems respond to the new scion? Will the plant force the scion into vegging or will it recognize it as it's new main shoot etc.

I think that you will have a greater chance of success if you graft the flowering scion to one of the lower branches. If you remove the main shoot the plant will most likely believe that that's where it ends and the scion will just die off.

You should try it and see what happens. I'm mainly going to concentrate on grafting scions onto a host while both are in veg and watch how the plant behaves.

I did an experiment where I stuck all the lower branches of the plant into the soil, hoping that new roots would form on the branches. I thought it would work due to the fact that clones root, but it didn't. Maybe I should try keeping the branches in glasses of water and if adventuous roots form I could then place them in the soil, effectively creating 4 new stems. Don't know if it will work though. Maybe the plant only recognizes one main stem.

Kodiak said:

Hydro-Soil, in response to the two points that you mentioned I will have to point out that it is probably the host that dictates how the scion will behave. Adding a flowering scion to a host will most likely not trigger flowering for the entire plant, or so I believe.

Click to expand...

I've already read research that indicates that the flowering scion contains enough hormone in it to trigger flowering in the host. Regardless of light period.
Grafting a flowering cut onto a vegetative host in 24/0 lighting triggered the entire host to flower.
What the research doesn't state is whether or not full flowering maturity was obtainable.

Kodiak said:

Your second point on the other hand is more interesting. If you could graft a flowering clone onto a host and then have only that branch flowering under 24/0 while the rest of the plant remains in vegetative state, that would be something.

Click to expand...

I was looking to do the opposite.
Veg a monster scrog under 24/0 lighting.
Graft a flowering plant to it to trigger flowering.
Continually graft a new flowering branch each week or whatever is necessary to continue the flowering trigger and complete maturity.
All while under 24/0 lighting.

I'm pretty sure that it would need continual grafts as 24/0 lighting would make the plant re-veg and I don't believe that one 'shot' of hormones would be sufficient to combat re-veg and grow a completely mature harvest.

What would be needed is a fairly successful and easy way to have a graft a week take on a large plant.

What coot forgot to mention was ... Apples don't grow true from seed ... if you want an apple cultivar to survive it must be Kept going by grafting slips on to healthy "stumps" ... it's amazing to think that the worlds best apples were probably grown on a Crab Apple Tree. Johnny Chapmans apple seeds and their subsequent trees were spitters (used for cider).

One big supermom plant would be cool! 2 or three diff strains

Thanks for info Hydro-Soil, I did not know that.

I know what you mean now, that makes more sense. It's a cool experiment, try it out.

It is essentially the same as creating an autoflowering strain. Personally I would rather work with some ruderalis strain, improving on it through hybridization.

I'm not so sure however that you will get a larger crop that way, plants need at least 4 hours of darkness for the dark reactions so perhaps 20/4 would be more suitable, maybe even 18/6, plants need some rest.

I admit that it is a cool theory but in the end it seems like a lot of work and a lot of stress for the plants, why not just flip the switch and call it even?

This is however uncharted territory so the only way to find out what happens is to try.

Kodiak said:

It is essentially the same as creating an autoflowering strain. Personally I would rather work with some ruderalis strain, improving on it through hybridization.

Click to expand...

It doesn't change the plant. It's only inducing flowering because the graft has the flowering hormone in it that spreads to the host. As long as the host is kept under 24/0 lighting it will eventually stop flowering and re-veg.
We're not changing any genetics.

Kodiak said:

I'm not so sure however that you will get a larger crop that way, plants need at least 4 hours of darkness for the dark reactions so perhaps 20/4 would be more suitable, maybe even 18/6, plants need some rest.

Click to expand...

Yield is directly tied to Kilowatt hours of light the plant is exposed to. Being able to flower completely under 24/0 won't give you double the yield but it will be more than a 50% increase. Again, look at ruderalis as you mentioned.
Cannabis plants do not need dark as there isn't any process they do at night that they don't do during the day just fine. Giving it dark only affects the flowering process. Otherwise flowering auto-flower plants under 24/0 lighting would cause some sort of issue and it doesn't and never will. Cannabis is in a class of plants that can grow just fine without a dark period.

Kodiak said:

I admit that it is a cool theory but in the end it seems like a lot of work and a lot of stress for the plants, why not just flip the switch and call it even?

Click to expand...

Not really stress for the plant as your just grafting a single branch to a larger plant. Should only take a few minutes too for each graft. The issue is finding a way to have readily available plants in flower and a quick and easy way to add them to your giant monster without them getting in the way. As for flipping to 12/12 and calling it even, see above.

Kodiak said:

This is however uncharted territory so the only way to find out what happens is to try.

Click to expand...

Square on the head there for sure.
Most likely it will turn out that the size of the graft you need to use to make a big plant like that flower will make it unpractical.

What I meant was that in both cases you get a plant that is flowering under a 24/0 light schedule. I am quite familiar with Mendelian genetics after studying botany on my free time and making my own cannabis hybrids. No worries though, we are on the same page here.

Sure, I know that cannabis can photosynthesize 24/7 as it is an C3 plant, but nontheless, I consider a short dark period necessary for plant health since even Ruderalis plants are never subjected to this light schedule for a long period of time in the wild. True, there are periods of almost 24h light in northern climates but prior to and after that window there is always a dark period, even if it is a short one.

24/0 light is just unnatural in my opinion but that is a matter of preference when it comes to growing. I used to veg plants under 24/0 but nowadays I always start at 20/4 then gradually drop the schdule down to 12/12. I do this because the thought of having plants work 24/7 just seems too stressful for my frame of mind. Also allowing your equipment time to cool down for a few hours a day probably prolongs the life span of bulbs etc.

In your case of the graft, you might be right that the 24/0 light schedule is best in order to minimize confusion in the plant. This will also make your results more accurate as you factor out the darkness from the equation.

When I was talking about stress, I was refering to the hormonal imbalance that is created by adding the flowering scion to the host. Mixed signals that is.

I did some more research and apparently the gene that activates flowering in plants is located in the leafs (sensory pigements). This gene produces a messenger molecule that is sent to the main shoot apex, then specific protein components communicate with other molecules at the bud sites and tells them to trigger flowering. So basically the plant follows the sensory pigments in the leafs..

..unless the main shoot tells it otherwise, so it might just work.

This means however that you must successfully graft the scion in the place of the main shoot. Removing the main shoot usually means that the plant senses that the top is missing and readjusts the next shoots in line to function as main shoots. Replacing the "head" might just prove impossible due to the way that the plant behaves. If you graft the scion on one of the lower branches, the plant will follow it's normal pattern because there is still communication between the leafs and the main shoot.

It's worth a shot, would be interesting to know if it works.