Been a week and she doesn’t look great to me.
Soaked rootstock 4 hrs prior to graft. Followed instructions, had clean cuts, acted quickly, sterilized all knives.
Started very flat, looked great. Primary issue seems that the rootstock cactus seemed to “deflate” heavily on one side over the other, but seems mostly attached except for the backside due to the slumping. Only removed stretchy hose for the picture, haven’t physically tried to touch/move to see if the cactus has connected.
Any advice is appreciated this is my first try. If I should start over, and the graft is a failure I can except that too. Thanks for your help!
by NaturalCactus
11 Comments
I thought you had made some geometric PS2 cactus. But I see it is paper now.
I’m just gonna say if that’s the best you could make it look I don’t have much hope of it actually holding that’s a mess of a graft
Soaking rootstock is completely unnecessary, this looks rough to be honest. Let it go for another week and gently press sideways on the scion. If it stays you are good.
I would avoid using rubber bands completely next time. Use pantyhose, netting, micropore tape, Saran Wrap, etc. literally anything besides rubber bands especially for a graft like this where rubber bands won’t easily keep it in one place. My first TBMC graft was a lot like this because it ended up bending and not taking very well due to the bands. If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up. I may not have all the answers but out of all the wonderful people in this community, I can point you in the right direction otherwise. 🤟🏼
It definitely dehydrated a lot but I think as long as it heals it’ll be fine
Im looking at where you cut the areoles off of the rootstock. Sometimes when the wounded area extends a ways down from the graft surface, the plant deals with all the wounded tissue by [abscising](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscission) a larger area than that which was cut off.
Abscision usually refers to plants dropping fruit and leaves, but it can also refer to branches on larger trees and succulents, and in cacti it occurs in sections of stem. Essentially the plant forms a barrier of cells between wherever it thinks the damaged and un-damaged area is, and intentionally kills off all the tissue above that boundary, to prevent any diseases that may be entering above from progressing. It allows the plant to retreat to defensible borders with less vulnerable surface area.
First you’ll see it shrivel like this, then you’ll start to see a pronounced line appear between the affected and unaffected areas. It may turn yellow above that line. Eventually, the withered portion will fall off, and it will have already formed a functional skin underneath.
I have lost a few grafts by doing stuff like this, just going a little too aggressively cutting small pieces, and had a cacti decide to abscise the part of itself that the graft union was on.
One option, which I recommend, is to do the graft while initially leaving the aeroles intact. After the graft is successful, the rootstock starts receiving hormones from the scion signaling healthy tissue is there, so it will want to defend it. The graft wound will also have healed. At that point, it is safe to gouge out some of those areoles or deal with them if you see a pup forming.
However, really vigorous fast-growing plants in the warmth of summer, with a higher sugar content, tend to be less apt to abscise chunks that are wounded, so you can be a little more aggressive without having this happen.
It could work, also could not. Only time will tell. Give it another 3-4 days. The reason it’s so deflated on one side is bc you cut off the aeroles. Which isn’t bad necessarily, but you don’t need to cut so deeply into the flesh, think of it like peeling a potato… you don’t want to dig deep in, just surface level cuts will do for the aeroles to remove. You’ve removed a large amount of structural integrity by taking away that large surface area of the outer skin. That will definitely help you to avoid so much “deflation” next go round.
Yeah this is a rough graft, gotta revise and edit for sure!
Your rootstock is begging you to try again without soaking it
What am I even looking at
Honestly I would start over again