Joined/spliced/grafted plants joining root systems

If anyone has any experience with grafting or splicing cannabis I'd like to hear. I'm thinking about joining 26 plants together so they can share their root systems.

The reason I want to try this is because having just recovered from a major fungus gnat and root aphid infestation, which killed 5 consecucative crops over a period of 6 months....I'm back with 26 cuts sealed in an airtight nft tray.

My thinking here is that if a larger plant can help support a smaller one you end up with a more even crop. Having watched some plants struggle, and some some survive, if they we're lol connected maybe it wouldn't have been a total loss. I grow in a vertical setup so having a consistent plant size is a bonus so this may help that.

So if I take a branch from each plant, cut a small slice into the branches and join them while still keeping the growing tips alive. Will these branches fuse if tightly bound with tape?

If they will they will surely start to share resources.

Good idea or waste of time?

- Dopeweed

I was just thinking about that, which does not bode well for the idea! LOL.

I'm sure you'll get some fully educated responses, but from my limited knowledge I'm not sure you can graft an annual, I know I've only done it with perennials.

With all of the experiments with cloning and controlled breeding, I have to imagine this has been tried before, if for nothing else, than to attempt to make a "dwarf sativa" or something… ?

I haven't done it but you can graft. Might take too long to be practical for indoor. You should probably focus on your dirt and water to avoid those bugs, seems risky to put all those eggs in one basket with grafting. Fungus gnats should be no problem to deal with and root aphids although fast acting can be avoided.

Impractical, the short cycle of these plants makes it almost worthless to use grafting. Someone who cannot keep gnats from wiping out a crop would have their hands full trying to execute and maintain grafts while they approximate.

You are running NFT, unless there is an immuno-compromised individual in the home you might consider using soil to grow. Less moving parts is always optimal, less to go wrong. Some people use the KISS method, too complex for me, I prefer KIS. Keep it simple.

AlecTheGardener said:

Impractical, the short cycle of these plants makes it almost worthless to use grafting. Someone who cannot keep gnats from wiping out a crop would have their hands full trying to execute and maintain grafts while they approximate.

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Not impractical at all. Someone who cannot control their environment will have issues no matter what. In a perpetual type op, a mother plant, or multiple mothers, with multiple strains grafted on could feed a flower room with a different strain every week/2 weeks.etc. Eventually I will have 2 mothers with multiple indica dom strains and 2 mothers with sativa dom strains. I figure i can have something like 16 strains on 4 mother plants, (4 strains per plant.) I've actually only seen 2 people do it, and only through forums, it seems to be kind of time intensive until the plants are established, but once they are it's no different than any other plant. The only caveat I've seen is you need to closely match your strains, whatever you graft onto a plant should have similar nute needs as the other strains, but as mothers rarely get fed to full strength it isn't a major concern, just something to be aware of.

WeedFreak78 said:

Not impractical at all. Someone who cannot control their environment will have issues no matter what. In a perpetual type op, a mother plant, or multiple mothers, with multiple strains grafted on could feed a flower room with a different strain every week/2 weeks.etc. Eventually I will have 2 mothers with multiple indica dom strains and 2 mothers with sativa dom strains. I figure i can have something like 16 strains on 4 mother plants, (4 strains per plant.) I've actually only seen 2 people do it, and only through forums, it seems to be kind of time intensive until the plants are established, but once they are it's no different than any other plant. The only caveat I've seen is you need to closely match your strains, whatever you graft onto a plant should have similar nute needs as the other strains, but as mothers rarely get fed to full strength it isn't a major concern, just something to be aware of.

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I hadn't thought of using grafts on a mother plant, typically I don't keep moms so the idea is foreign to me. That is an exceptional use of grafting.

My point still stands, someone who cannot deal with fungus gnats for six cycles in a row that ruins harvest likely will not be able to keep cuttings healthy long enough for them to graft and approximate onto the stock.

dude im not going to rag on you about your pest issues but i will say this ,people like you make the world go around ,simply with a open mind and trying to discover new options , i think it is a great idea and if it doesn't work then you can say you tried .i have grafted roses together and got awesome colors from them ,in my opinion try to just graft 2 or maybe 3 together though ,i dont think 26 are going to fuse together,i dont no though give it a try.good luck man

As I've said in the other ten thousand similar threads, save the grafting drills for perennials.

Having said that, for soft tissue it's hard to beat a #2 Excel blade holder using Schick injector blades, the 7 pack type.

ohhhkay.....

Thanks for the replies, I sorta get the idea....yeah it might work, but the fusing process would take about as long as the whole lifecycle of the plant so to see any effects you'd be in veg for two months.

As for my pests+nft+5 crops dead...well...I have 8 mothers, 80 cuts in various stages, 4 propagators and two V frames with 4.8kw mh/hps mixed lighting with dual 901 nft trays. My setup is fine....we nearly lost everything at one point and have used everything commercially available. Its been a long road...5 crops is 6 months for us and we have either been lucky or skilled in the past at keeping the bugs away cos for the last 8 years...I've never had to deal with anything more than a housefly. Thought Id defend myself there

Point is, Ill try and do anything, if it makes a difference. So no offence, but Ill give it a go and report back.

7days ago


Today


They look nice yeah?

- dopeweed

dopeweed said:

ohhhkay.....

Thanks for the replies, I sorta get the idea....yeah it might work, but the fusing process would take about as long as the whole lifecycle of the plant so to see any effects you'd be in veg for two months.

As for my pests+nft+5 crops dead...well...I have 8 mothers, 80 cuts in various stages, 4 propagators and two V frames with 4.8kw mh/hps mixed lighting with dual 901 nft trays. My setup is fine....we nearly lost everything at one point and have used everything commercially available. Its been a long road...5 crops is 6 months for us and we have either been lucky or skilled in the past at keeping the bugs away cos for the last 8 years...I've never had to deal with anything more than a housefly. Thought Id defend myself there

Point is, Ill try and do anything, if it makes a difference. So no offence, but Ill give it a go and report back.

7days ago
View attachment 3358273

Today
View attachment 3358268 View attachment 3358269

They look nice yeah?

- dopeweed

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Gotcha, no offense intended with the gnats bit.

WeedFreak78 said:

The only caveat I've seen is you need to closely match your strains, whatever you graft onto a plant should have similar nute needs as the other strains, but as mothers rarely get fed to full strength it isn't a major concern, just something to be aware of.

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I would have assumed that the growing tip would somehow request the required nutrients from the lower nodes by use of hormones etc. I don't have a clue what I'm talking about but from what you say you seem to suggest it's the root stock that determines what nutrients are available assuming that the root knows the difference between veg and flower. Does that make sense? I would take from that you need to match flowering time and length as this would sync nutrient uptake.

Makes my idea pointless, because I've got blue cheese and uk cheese, ones more indica so shorter time to finish.

- dopeweed

dopeweed said:

I would have assumed that the growing tip would somehow request the required nutrients from the lower nodes by use of hormones etc. I don't have a clue what I'm talking about but from what you say you seem to suggest it's the root stock that determines what nutrients are available assuming that the root knows the difference between veg and flower. Does that make sense? I would take from that you need to match flowering time and length as this would sync nutrient uptake.

Makes my idea pointless, because I've got blue cheese and uk cheese, ones more indica so shorter time to finish.

- dopeweed

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What I'm getting at is some strains want a higher feeding dose in veg than other just to stay viable, so you wouldn't want to graft a high nutrient needing plant onto a base plant that can live with low nute levels, you'll end up starving the plant with higher nute needs and that part of the plant will have issues. But honestly I don't actually see this as being a deciding issue. IF you want to run a grafted plant straight through to the end of flower then you will need to match strains pretty closely, but, like has been said grafting just to flower isn't worth it. The only time i can see grafting as a viable technique is on mother plants that would be kept in the veg stage for extended periods of time.

Not the best picture but if you look closely around the middle of the picture you should be able to see the hack job! LOL

All the lower nodes growing up are from the root stock.

Thats sweet work man. I get ya point about the nutrient levels etc. I wont ask you to explain here because no doubt its been repeated in other places. This is an interesting idea, I think there are other potential uses for it. I would love to run my mothers in a fogger. We use them for our aero propogator and to have a single way of feeding all the mums and cuttings in one go would be great. We tend to use the same strength nutrient for all our nursery plants. We could have a set of roots which we periodically replace to keep the system free from organic debris. So take a cutting (one that has roots of course) and then graft it back onto the mother, then slowly retire the old root system as the new grafted roots start to provide nourishment.

I hate coco. Anything to get rid of it.

-dopeweed

dopeweed said:

If anyone has any experience with grafting or splicing cannabis I'd like to hear. I'm thinking about joining 26 plants together so they can share their root systems.

The reason I want to try this is because having just recovered from a major fungus gnat and root aphid infestation, which killed 5 consecucative crops over a period of 6 months....I'm back with 26 cuts sealed in an airtight nft tray.

My thinking here is that if a larger plant can help support a smaller one you end up with a more even crop. Having watched some plants struggle, and some some survive, if they we're lol connected maybe it wouldn't have been a total loss. I grow in a vertical setup so having a consistent plant size is a bonus so this may help that.

So if I take a branch from each plant, cut a small slice into the branches and join them while still keeping the growing tips alive. Will these branches fuse if tightly bound with tape?

If they will they will surely start to share resources.

Good idea or waste of time?

- Dopeweed

Click to expand...

I heard from an old timer that he used to graft bud to hops rhizomes and it would give him Crazy good bud!

Gotta love nature

-dopeweed

Just having branches heal together is not going to have them all benefit from each others' root systems. You have to match up the vascular systems properly, and in strategic locations, so that the two plants become one, instead of two that are stuck together with a callus on a random branch.

EverythingsHazy said:

Just having branches heal together is not going to have them all benefit from each others' root systems. You have to match up the vascular systems properly, and in strategic locations, so that the two plants become one, instead of two that are stuck together with a callus on a random branch.

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I did sort of assume that joining two branches together as low down as possible at the point of two nodes would be a sensible location. In any case if two branches did fuse, surely the osmotic process use to transport water would dictate that a branch with a high osmosis potential would ultimately feed a branch with a low potential. I know that this is very simplistic but ultimately it does make sense. I guess the point here is how/when/where to join the branches for best effect and how you measure it. I have 26 plants in a tray right now and two are very small in comparison. Had I joined it to another larger plant....would it have made any difference? Even a small difference would be worth it, because these plants are half the size of the others. Also one side of the tray is taller than the other, which always happens with NFT...you do get tiny tiny differences which have a large impact. A matter of a few days has a massive effect later on.

Its interesting, because it doesn't cost anything to do and could have real potential benefits. I guess the next tray I do, I'll graft the plants together and see if I get the same variation in plant size I have always had with the odd plant or side of the NFT tray. Ill keep this thread updated with the results.

I've not bothered to graft these plants together, but I will use it as a reference for the next identical tray I am in the process of cropping.

-dopeweed

EverythingsHazy said:

Just having branches heal together is not going to have them all benefit from each others' root systems. You have to match up the vascular systems properly, and in strategic locations, so that the two plants become one, instead of two that are stuck together with a callus on a random branch.

Click to expand...

WHAT?? Either it's going to take or it's not..you can't have a graft fuse to the base plant but not take nutrients from it. The callus is the fusing of the two plants.. Your observation is akin to saying a hand transplant doesn't take advantage of the host bodies circulatory system..

Sorry I thought you said "Just having branches heal together is not going to have them all benefit from each others' root systems."

Im saying I can only assume that two branches that heal, fuse, join, would surely take advantage of each others' roots'. Confused myself tbh but I think we think the same thing

-dopeweed