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I'm going to use this diary to document:
(1) my cultivation of moms of several strains
(2) my first-ever attempt at grafting a donor strain onto a root stock strain
- All plants are being grown in a CANNA coco/perlite (70/30) blend in fabric pots, and are drip-fed with Blumats
- Other than being inoculated with AN Voodoo Juice and Myco Jordan (mycorrhizae) at the time of transplant, these plants are fed only MANTIS Buffered Nutrients at 5 ml/L.
- NOTE: MANTIS is fed at 5 ml/L from seed to harvest.
The White Shark (from Licenced Producer WeedMD) mom will be the root stock onto which other strains will be grafted. Currently, I have a Somango XXL (Nirvana) and an 8 Ball Kush (Barney's Farm) being developed as donor stock. Soon, I will be starting Misty Kush (Nirvana) and Blue Cheese (Barney's Farm) as additional donor stock.
The idea is that I will eventually have one "SuperMom" from which I can choose clones from various different strains/branches.
I harvested 24 cuttings from the White Shark mom this week, which was the first time she donated! She recovered fully within a few hours. Some ongoing maintenance pruning/training on deck for later this week.
The 2 new moms (XXL & 8 Ball) are looking beautiful. I’ll be topping them soon to start working on structure.
Here is my first attempt at grafting. I’m not confident that these two grafts will take. Although the grafting tool made beautiful cuts in the juicy donor stems (scions), I had trouble getting clean cuts on the rootstock because the branches (of the necessary diameter) were more woody.
I did the SomangoXXL first, thinking most unforced errors will be made on the initial attempt. And I will have more XXL donor stock this week from the crop I currently have in Hydro to make another effort. Keeping the graft together while applying wax/tape was more tricky than I planned for. Plus that wax gets messy reallllllly fast!
I tweaked my procedure slightly on the second attempt with the 8 Ball Kush and I think I may have gotten a better join. Time will tell.
1. White Shark
- She's all alone in the Mothership right now, but soon will have 2 new roommates! In preparation, I've moved her from the centre to a corner position in the box.
- Continuing to prune/train her into a bowl shape that allows lots of light/air penetration and also that allows her to provide ~24 cuttings at any given time to run a crop
2. SomangoXXL & 8 Ball Kush
- continuing to develop a "mainline" type structure.
- focusing on total plant shape/size and number of available cloning sites (need ~24 at a time)
- they are currently in 1 gal pots, but I will transplant to 2 gal in another 1-2 weeks, then move them into the Mothership with the White Shark mom.
> all plants continuing to love and thrive with their Blumats
> it's all INCREDIBLY convenient to use Mantis Buffered Nutrients because - regardless of plant stage - it's always 5 ml/L. So that means I can run all plants/Blumats off a single reservoir without being concerned about EC/TDS 😎
Momma Shark II is healthy and growing slowly by design. I’ve got the 400W ballast dimmed to 250W. Lots of clone sites available when needed next. Bowl design seems to work well in these 2 gal pots in a 2x2 space that should be able to accommodate 4 moms if I stay on top of training!
The two trainees - 8BK and XXL and doing well with manifold development. I have 20 branches on each plant now. My plan is to transplant very soon before tying any of these down. Then start training them out to the edge of the 2 gal and then upward to create more bowl designs. They’ll be moving to the Mothership to join Momma Shark soon 😎
@Rangi_Kijani, you should look into Side Grafting it may be a better option to experiment with on weed plants. See a bit of info on internet doing it with tomato plants which have a similar stem structure.
@Philindicus,I think there was a mismatch of tissue between the scion and root stock. The scion was lush, green and juicy - allowing the grafting tool to make a clean cut. The root stock was hard (due to training) and did not have greener branches of a large enough diameter to graft into.
The tool also has 3 different blade designs and I opted to use the omega Ω style because it is said to give the most secure join. However, on the firm root stock I didn’t get a clean cut and did some crushing of the tissue. Next time I’ll try using a “simpler” blade. I also now have Parafilm to get a better wrap/seal around the graft site.
I’ll give it another go and post updates ... once the moms from
my new strains have developed enough I can also try using a different root stock to see if that produces any different results.
@Rangi_Kijani, that sucks bro but nice try. Were the stems solid or a bit hollow? May be they were to soft and not woody enough. You definately need a bit of light bark with a cambium layer. I'm sure you'll be trying again in the future. Back to the laboratory.
Well, first grafting effort was informative, but neither graft survived. Due to stem diameter, I didn’t get a clean cut with the grafting tool, so lining up the cambian tissue was difficult and obviously became problematic.
I May try again in a few days when I have some more donor stock developed from the XXL I have in hydro.
My intention was certainly to wrap the graft joint tightly to ensure cambian contact. However, my procedure was shaky (literally!) so I’m not confident that the graft is either properly aligned or secured. But, I know how I’ll do it differently next time! 😎
The challenge with this mom is that I’ve trained her back continually so she has a super sturdy “open bowl”-type framework. I’d like to graft into this if possible to keep everything low to start. I have <30” total height to play with. I also should have chosen a narrower blade (the tool came with 3) to make the cut. Lesson learned. If all else fails, I’ll graft into a new shoot, although that will be higher up.
@Philindicus, thanks very much! I’ve read a bit, watched some interesting videos etc ... so I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous! Lol Just going to have fun and see what more I can learn 😎
Rangi_Kijani
