Thanks for sharing. I did that method and it is a 100% success but you really don't need all those tools and def not a saw. Also you are holding the cutter next to your stomach my friend. Just keep it safe. I liked the tube insertion instead of twist and pull. Cheers
I've been graft for 37 years... I have knife control.. But thanks! Silvi gave me an idea to drill a small diameter hole in the core then when I cut the stem it will be a hollow cylinder not a rod.... that should make this dangerous cut easier... because as you suggest it could result badly with the novice!!!! You're so right. Thanks for this point!!!
I really like this peg graft method you've come up with by using a hollow rod to core out the center of the scion. I've seen many videos of peg grafts where people remove the excess material by scoring around stem and twisting the excess off, then using a drill to hollow out the female piece, and I believe that your rod method is far superior as it solves several problems I've observed with other methods. Scoring and twisting the excess flesh off of the core creates a different sized hole very time which may not match with the female piece if you cut the stem and twist it off by the same method. A similar sized hole may be achieved if you drill out the female piece, but each diameter of the core is different and may be inconsistent, so it's tricky to choose the right bit every time. With your method the peg and hole will always be exactly the same size, so the fit between the two will always be snug enough to promote healing and prevent outside contamination from coming in. The core may be very thin with other methods to the point where it has difficulty supporting the weight of the scion, especially without a good system to hold the two in place. I've seen others use a drill with this method and observed the results, and I've tried it myself as well. In general I would advise against using a drill unless the core of the scion hasn't turned woody at all. If you can't cut through the core easily with a dull knife, then it's already too thick to try to use a drill bit on. When you try to drill through a woody or semi-woody core, inevitably some of the core will remain inside of the scion as the harder bits will push the drillbit out towards the softer flesh of the stem. This is especially true if you have the it attached to a drill- if you do want to try this method, I recommend you drill into the flesh with the drillbit in your hand. Woody stems heal together very poorly and at best will make for a weak union, or at worst will serve as a point for infection and rot to take hold. What happens most often is that the two pieces don't fuse together and the exterior dries, then callous tissue forms between them. Unlike fruit trees, cactus callous tissue won't truly fuse together with time, although it will expend against each other to make the joint physically strong despite not being biologically connected. If you do have scion with soft stems available then I'd recommend trying to use a drillbit, but if the stems are woody at all then the hollow tube you're using is far superior. I've performed a few successful peg grafts while holding a bit in my hand and I was able to have far more control than I would have with a drill. I still would have preferred a hollow rod since if the stock is soft enough to get a clean hole into the core, it wouldn't be any challenge to cut through the core with an utility blade. There's also the risk of air getting trapped within the hole as you insert the scion, which would be expelled by the holes in the side if I had cut the core through the stem with a blade. A common theme with the peg grafts I've seen seems to be that the "cambium layers" that are exposed at the cut end of the core of each piece don't actually need to fuse together to form a successful graft union. In all of the videos i've seen that demonstrate this method, your cuts are by far the cleanest, but all of them work. Often times the end of the male core will be snipped off jaggedly with a pair of scissors, or even snapped off by bending the so it's completely uneven, but the graft is still successful. I have some ideas on why the grafts still work which may make performing a peg graft much easier and safer for you. I've been thinking a lot about the best methods for grafting dragon fruit recently, and the internal anatomy of the grafts that may make each method successful, and I think I've come up with a good explanation of what makes grafts work as well as a few ideas for some new types of grafts. I have experience with grafting other genera of ornamental cactus so I have some understanding of the features that make for a good union. Interestingly Hylocereus is commonly used as a temporary stock for other cactus genera but always has to be de-grafted after a few years as the rootstock will inevitably die off or rot. I believe that this has to do with either the ability of the scion to gather enough energy to support the stock (even in non-variegated varieties) and/or the secondary development of woody core as the rootstock's stele changes its growth phase to produce more wood. This likely won't be an issue when grafting Hylocereus X Hylocereus long term as long as the union is good, but it's really made me think about which type of union would hold up the best when grafting dragon fruit plants for long-term, sustained production. I'm happy to share some of my ideas if you're interested.
Wow, how fun to read your thoughts! I hope you and everyone else understands that virtually everything I do has to have a practical and plausible application... I'm still a little sore about the comment that I tried to deceive breeders... The application to breeding as I see it has only come to me now after more than 20 years... This "peg" graft (great term!) as you call it only has limited application for me... I may want to convert something in the field that proved unsuccessful or I might want to convert extras that i grew for my test plot and grew extra to make sure I had enough or lost ID varieties as I throw them away if I mix up the ID... But for breeding never. Waste if time in the long run regardless of may seem like an expedient method... It's too late for my field work now... Even the 13 I grafted in the greenhouse although all successful the heat of late summer is hard on them as my greenhouses are passive with no cooling! Obviously love to hear more... I too plan on a hand, manual slow drill experiment next spring in the field..
@@graymartin2275 I do appreciate the "practical and plausible application" aspect of how you have to approach things, and I have to admit that it's been a fun excercise for me to think of methods that could benefit a massive operation the size of yours. I'm unaware of any comments people have made that you're trying to deceive breeders, unless they're unhappy about you "hoarding" that new varieties that you've created for your farm. I personally see nothing wrong with that and find your approach on breeding for personal use to be inspirational. Too many people try to rely on existing cultivars of any fruit without even considering the possible rewards of trying to propagate their own varieties from seed. I remember reading about one fruit tree grower who, instead of spending money on expensive named varieties grafted to known rootstocks and planting them all at even spacing on his property, would instead sow several thousand seeds haphazardly at a much closer spacing than they could sustain as adult trees. As the seeds germinated and grew over the years, he did everything in his power to neglect the seeds and provided them with almost nothing in terms of care. As a result, the vast majority of plants died out when they were still young, leaving only the plants that were the most vigorous and best suited for growing in his specific micro-climate without the need of cost-, resource-, and time-intensive intervention. From those trees, he then had the option of selecting for the best fruit variety or grafting other plants onto them. Had he nurtured the plants throughout their juvenile stage and into adulthood, he would never truly know which of the plants would be best suited to withstand the stresses of his particular environment (Perhaps this is why you say using grafting for breeding is a waste of time. I still think it can be helpful to boost a seedling from a juvenile to a mature growth form then de-graft and re-root it to see how it does on its own roots. This would obviously be time intensive, but it might not be any more time intensive than the extra care that must be given to delicate seedlings as they're maturing). I think of this as a form of controlled natural selection as he selected for vigor by letting the weak die out naturally instead of nurturing them to a certain size, then artificially selecting those which he THOUGHT would do best. From what I've heard you talk about in your videos, it sounds like this might be similar to your outlook on breeding and selecting new varieties: the goal isn't to obtain one ultimate variety that's better than every other, but rather to make selections that are best suited to the individual grower's environment and needs. It wouldn't always make sense to spread these varieties to other growers as they may not suit their unique needs, and they likely could discover a better variety on their own if they start with their own wide gene pool and narrow it down to meet their own requirements. Grafting may have more practical application for you than you think. Of course it can be useful to speed up fruit production of a small unrooted cutting, to topwork established varieties, to propagate material or to see much faster results in breeding projects. But as you say, in your case it would probably make little sense to put so many man hours towards grafting on new rootstock before you outplant them unless the grafted plants have some substantial long-term benefit over cuttings on their own roots. But one of the more exciting aspects for me, and probably the most applicable aspects for you, is the potential influence that one rootstock can have on another variety. My favorite videos of yours have been your experiments with American Beauty on different stocks to determine if there is any substantial improvement to their cold tolerance, and despite the small sample size and poor graft unions, I thought that the results looked promising enough that they warrant further experimentation, perhaps with different rootstocks. Even more interesting than that is the potential to use an interstem for dragon fruit. Instead of using it as a bridge between two incompatible varieties (like Winter Banana apple or Adara plum) it could potentially be used to give the scion the growth characteristics of both of the stocks. I guess in fruit tree terms it would be similar to using a nematode-resistant rootstock with a dwarfing variety grafted onto that, then the desired scion grafted onto the dwarfed variety. The structure of the final tree should be both dwarfed and be resistant to nematodes (though perhaps not as dwarfed if it were on the dwarfing variety's roots, I'm unsure). For dragon fruit, you could select the variety that grows the fastest in your conditions with the best root system and maybe use one of the slow-growing, very thick H. ocamponis species or varieties (El Grullo) as an interstem, then graft your fruiting variety on top of that. Theoretically the resulting plant should grow much faster than the H. ocamponis would and still develop some of the thickened, weather-resistant characteristics of the interstem. Some decreased fruit production may of the interstem may be inherited by the scion also, but I suspect that most of the growth rate and fruit production has to do with how much nutrients the rootstock is capable of absorbing. It's hard to say exactly what would happen without actual experimentation, but it could potentially allow you to gain access to the traits of some of the hardiest varieties without having to worry about their accompanying slow growth rates. I've seen one video where someone does a similar interstem graft on Hylocereus (using the peg graft method, by chance). In the broken spanish that I understand, it seemed that he said that the interstem would help the scion grow stronger, but didn't really explain why. I don't think he showed examples of established plants that had been grafted with an interstem. In addition to the test grafts of American Beauty that you've done, I have reason to believe that cacti rootstocks have a heavy influence on the growth habit of their scions. In the grafting of ornamental varieties of cacti, it's well known that the species of rootstock used can completely distort the physical form of its scion to the point that the same scion grafted on different stocks can look like a completely different plant. Among the ornamental cactus grafting hobby I've heard that different rootstocks do improve cold tolerance, but it's difficult to tell if they truly improve the hardiness of the scion or if they are just more cold tolerant than other commonly used rootstock species. If they do improve the hardiness of the scion, it may just be that the root system and base of the plant is more tolerant of cold, wet conditions (like Opuntia humifusa) rather than any chemical or physical change of the scion. I can tell you with some certainty that the use of certain rootstocks make the scion LESS hardy than others as they tend to result in very fast, thin, weaker growth for some species (like using Hylocereus or Pereskiopsis compared to Opuntia or Trichocereus) so it does make logical sense that the other rootstocks could increase the hardiness. Whatever the case, no one knows what effects different Hylocereus varieties have on each other since it seems people are just now beginning to experiment with them, and I only know of the one person who's used an interstem graft before.
OK yes tar disintegrates but this method may have issues as the ones I planted mostly broke down near the graft. I am now working on a budding method. I need to update video and I will as soon as any results show up.
Hi Gray, I've been thinking about a modified method of this graft. A friend of mine asked my to type out an explanation of it on one of their videos, and I figured you might want to hear about it as well. I've pasted the comment I left on their video below so I don't have to re-type the whole explanation again. For some background, I refer to their video titled "DISSECTING a DRAGON FRUIT Graft ( We look inside a graft to see how the Two plants merged)" posted by the channel "RARE DRAGON FRUIT", under which I left another comment explaining my thoughts about the internal physiology of the graft and how it differs from other non-cacti plants. The most important difference to know is that in cacti, the vascular cambium tissue isn't confined to the thin ring around the core (what people call the "cambium layer") but actually extends out to each bud/areole as well as an extensive network of vessels throughout the thick, succulent portion of the stem. I'm not a botanist and I don't have extensive experience with growing or grafting dragon fruit, but I do enjoy researching the topic and I have had some experience with grafting other types of cacti. I've drawn a few diagrams of Hyloerceus anatomy as best as I understand it that would better exemplify what I'm referring to. If you have an e-mail address, I'd be happy to send them to you and explain them as best as I can. quote: "Due to the way that woody tissue develops and heals, any type of graft that uses young, tender tissue should make a better union and be far stronger long-term than those that try to fuse a core that's already begun to mature. Although trying to obtain tender material can sometimes be less practical, it should help a lot in the longevity and structural integrity of the graft, so in my mind all of the best methods should utilize young tissue in both the stock and the scion. One of my methods is a modification of Gray's new method. I really like how he uses the rod, but I have a suspicion that the same strong union can be achieved with a less complicated process. I don't believe that any type of peg graft actually fuses at the blunt ends where the two inner "cores" line up unless both the scion and stock are extremely young, and the core can be easily sliced through without much pressure. Instead, the fusion takes place along the sides of where the core cylinder meet up and the vessels fuse laterally, then move upwards to transport energy into the scion. I explained this in more detail in your video of the dissected peg graft where there was obviously no union between the cut ends of the two cores, yet the scion was still plump and had taken. In your graft, you could also see that much of the woody inserted core had been left behind when you had drilled into it, and in those areas there wasn't any fusion between the two pieces, which ties back into woody tissue being terrible at forming new unions. Gray's method of using the tube completely removes any woody core and only leaves soft tissue, which makes for a far cleaner union, and that he uses the same diameter tubing for both means that they fit together perfectly. Prior to seeing his method, I preferred whittling down the flesh outside the core instead of twisting it so I would have some soft tissue remaining around the core to form the initial union, but I was still limited to using extremely tender branches with undeveloped cores for the female piece so I could drill into it without leaving any woody bits inside. My modification of Gray's method takes advantage of how I suspect the fusion takes place. I believe the pattern of fusion initiates from the exterior walls of the thin core on the male stock, branches into the tissue of the female scion, then travels upwards exterior to the stock's core until it reaches the scion's core, where it fuses back to the core and continues the flow of energy upwards. Due to apical dominance, the new buds usually emerge from the tip of the scion, even though there's usually no fusion or flow of nutrients in the space directly between the two original cores. (When grafting other types of cacti, a gap or air bubble trapped in the union between the two cut ends usually leads to a poor or failed union, and can cause rot. I think this is less of an issue in Hylocereus since I don't think the union occurs at that point with this type of graft, but it could still play a factor in how successful the union is). Because the fusion occurs laterally, I don't think it's necessary to leave any of the core of the scion intact. So instead of removing a core only halfway into the scion, you should be able to remove the core from the entire length of the scion and still achieve the same union, with the core of the rootstock going completely through the scion. The flow of energy would travel directly outwards to the lateral areoles instead of having to travel out, upwards, and then back in, and branch ramifications should form naturally as they do in an ungrafted lateral branch. The mechanics could be thought of as more similar to an areole/V-graft, but with a much larger scion used and more surface area at the graft union so it should be less prone to drying out and easier to perform in the field. This method can still be secured with a skewer and have sealant applied to the top of it, and it's faster, easier and safer than Gray's method that involves trying to cut through the woody core of the scion from the sides with a razor blade. All cuts through the core can be done with standard pruning shears, and none of them need to be a clean cut. I'd love to see what some of Gray's grafts look like once they're cut open so I can see if my theory about how the union forms is correct or not. There's no doubt that a union is forming and the grafts will grow well with his current method (in my mind still a far better than horizontal or cleft grafts), but I think he could achieve the exact same results with the modified method."
Sorry Jeremy it was a busy weekend... Sure I'm open to "Improved". Most everything I do is based on a practical and successful application... It will be a lot easier for me to follow your suggestions in a video... I was planning on doing some field grafting after the success of my greenhouse work but the season was just too late... Most grafting has a specified timing--late winter, early Spring, Spring, etc. I use to wait all the way until early summer before field grafting citrus.. But I digress. I will video my field grafting early next year... I hope to benefit from your suggestions! Thank you!
Jeremy, are you saying that a peg/core graft might be better if the peg and hole were double or triple in length? Y'all are inspirational with these grafting techniques.
Moved away from this graft. They call it peg graft. Look up bud grafting. This is also tricky because buds can be dormant. I thought I was an expert but apparently I am not because my success currently is below 50%. So sorry!
For me the graft union was a site of decay after many months. Actually almost nine months and five feet of growth 80 % broke down at the union. Amazing that late but almost like an incapatability...
Drill? Really? Wow! I certainly like your suggestion! I will try it! I just wonder if you damage the cambium layer? Apparently you have tried this... So, this is not my system... I thought it was... Please tell me you have experience drilling... I really like the suggestion in principle... Thank you!
@@SalviMithrin Yes yes, I like it... I can see it in my mind... All I need to know is how many have you done this way? The reason I like it so much is that I think it will be more practical for outside grafting plus it makes going deeper in the scion easier... I obviously have a drill and I will be trying this! I will certainly credit you Salvi! But again how many have you done like this as I only have concern regarding the scion cambium...
@@graymartin1555 I have done dozens of grafts with full success on different DF varieties. Outside grafting is not recommended due to scion dehydration as it happens with a standard grafting technique. Scion cambium is preserved by choosing the proper drill size. It is just the inverse way you are doing with your brass tubes. How do you know you are preserving the cambium by using those tube diameter? ;)
