Grafting Marijuana -Multiple Strains One Mother Plant

[Weasel]

The graft after removing the ribbon. Cleaner than with pipe cleaners -though it looks like it's starting to fester a bit from lack of air.





I had one other graft happening during this time. Since my Mama Thai plant has been tied up and connected to this plant for the last ten days- I took the chance to try and graft another one of the Panama clones with her, as a backup.







This one worked out nicely.




- Here is the original graft. Pretty gnarly, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder . I had some ribbon wrapped on this part for the last week and I see that the protruding end of the Malawi stem, which was detached before, has started growing and bonding into the Panama stalk. Makes me think maybe you could maybe do a graft by just binding them together.







Alright here is the Panama/Malawi/Mama Thai.
I'm going to let her veg a while and flower her in a 15 gallon pot in a few months. I've got some pipe cleaners wrapped around the vulnerable spots for now. Had a bad experience ripping my hard won graft apart last year.

I might update at some point if anything groundbreaking happens. But I'll turn this thread over to whoever else wants to carry on with it. Thanks McRuderalis for the prod to go out and do it, and Komatchi for the knowledge.

[PigSquishy]

WOW, I have to say you have truly helped me answer some of my questions, I am curious as to how the side to side will grow under long term stress of gravity. I say this because I have some trees that I kid you not every time the wind blows even the slightest bit will break branches off and I've got trees that can handle a 40+ mph and not break the first branch off. So I wonder how a side to side graft will handle the weight of the plant long term?I also question how fast a side to side graft will work for feeding as well, it is my understanding that a plant such as cannabis would have straw like passages running through it from the roots to the top of the plant, everything is in a straight line the "trunk" if you will, and then all the side branching off from the trunk of the stem. Then thinking how nutrients being higher or lower than the cell walls allow plants to soak up the nutrients it needs or pass them off if the plant has higher salts than the surrounding soil. Which brings me to the thought that perhaps you will run into a nutrient uptake issue on this graft because only one side of the branch will be getting direct access to the nutrients... and if that happens could it end up taxing the plant much like a injured leaf might when it hits a certain point, will the plant later kill this type of a graft if it begins taxing the plant if the branch can't get enough nutrients into it because of the side to side cut versus a bottom cut?

Would you please keep us updated on this or at least me... I am really curious as to how this will work out in time... I've also considered the possibility that in time the plant may grow around the end of the other stem to make a knob... Like how a tree will swallow up a fence or something that doesn't move as the tree grows.

[Weasel]

Thanks Greenthumb. Yeah I'll update now and then. I'm just fooling around with this mostly. I have my reasons for doing it with this method which I mentioned earlier.
Good points. Hopefully you're wrong. All I can say so far is that the first graft of Malawi is growing happily and everything looks healthy, just like a regular plant so far.
Obviously I'm hoping that the scar tissue will continue to grow over and strengthen the graft area.
I'm not too worried about the strength issue. Given a few weeks I think it will be plenty strong, and in a couple months I think it's going to be a strong and gnarly tree trunk.
As for the nutrient uptake- I don't know. Like I said, it's all good so far and I see no reason why it would get worse in future, rather than better.
I understand the concept of lining up the stem tissues. They may be lined up a little better than you think as it's not really a side by side graft- or at least not as much as it looks.if you look at the photo you can maybe visualize that at least some of the tissues line up.
My second graft was cut about 80% of the way through the stem instead of halfway like the one shown. So it lines up a bit more.
I suppose we will find out.
I'll dissect the plant in about six months when I'm done - if I don't reveg it.

[PigSquishy]

Well I will be looking forward to your results, it is only because of those who went ahead of us who want to try something new, who wanted to prove the impossible was possible that got us to the point we are at today. Every time I do an experiment I try to collect every idea as to what I think possible outcomes could be, carefully record and then research all of my results and try my best to walk away understanding a lot more afterwards than I did going into it...

Your doing it this way has also got me to seriously wondering if you couldn't root and graft a plant side by side together, where you clone it and graft it together, two different roots to the same plant... Your experiment has been loading me up all kinds of questions.

[Weasel]

Oh I think you could totally do that.
Probably a lot of this stuff has already been done. The cannabis world is a bunch of people in basements trying to invent the wheel. In case you haven't noticed

Hence this site...
I was thinking of training a plant in a circle and grafting a plant to itself to make a closed loop- a bunch of ideas like that just for fun.
I'm also very curious about the issue of genetics and how seeds would be affected by the genetic blending that supposedly takes place after grafting. I think I'll have to do some seeding with this plant.

[bobsakamoto]

The cannabis world is a bunch of people in basements trying to invent the wheel. In case you haven't noticed.

lmao!!! SO FREAKIN' TRUE THO!

[PigSquishy]

Oh I have noticed, I have also noticed that for every person who tries something there is something to learn from it... How many people tried repeatedly to invent flying and failed until...

[Weasel]

...our sky became filled with flying machines criss-crossing the earth carrying billions of humans around to every last remote corner spewing poison and CO2?
And then someone else figured out how to do it better? Etc. (I hope).

It's interesting though, to be in these times and see it evolving, from all the hard won knowledge we collectively hammered out and painfully developed about growing cannabis in the worst of times- to a million people online now who've never grown a vegetable or a houseplant before and are figuring out their new hydroponic setup, to these mega corps sweeping in to ride on our backs and do it all 'better' and sell their product back to us.
Agriculture has been around for a long time. Most of what we are 'learning' had been known for thousands of years. There is very little new knowledge that comes up in forums, mostly we're just dealing with the consequences of prohibition and talking about stuff that's been figured out a million times over. Oh well, as long as we're having fun...

[mcruderalis]

What if one grafted two living plants together some how ,or 3 or 4, "let the circle,,, go unbroken" If anyone could do it it would be you !

[Weasel]

Thanks McRuderalis. Nice to see you back around. Well that's what I just did I suppose, except I cut them free each time. Hmmmm. Maybe you'd get some interesting effect from keeping them together, I don't know. You would definitely want to have them all growing in the same pot though, otherwise it would be a pain in the butt.
Plants like to grow upwards- so that's the direction most of the growth will go if we aren't there messing around with things.
It would be interesting if you had several nearby trees sort of arched and grafted together, and the trunks grown thick over the years. Or some very slow furniture making possibilities come to mind. Stoner ideas...

[mcruderalis]

I still would like to see a cross between Dr.Grinspoon(not your typical looking plant) and Frisian Duck,definately not like reg.cannabis.

[sila'red'u-r]

Years and years ago it was said 'Hops'could be grafted to cannabis and you get a hops plant with THC.
They used hops in pillow cases to help you sleep,old time sleep remedy.
The Mary Jane Super weed's guide to legal highs listed them.I tried smoking hops in the 70's it tasted like,,,worse than tobacco ! (have we met bobsakomato)? :

[bobsakamoto]

it's cuz they're in the same branch on the plant fambly tree....or so i've read.

[sila'red'u-r]

So weasel,I normally shake the dirt off my harvesting plant and rinse the dirt off the roots,then put it in distilled water overnight as a way of one last water flush before starting the drying process.This year I just cut them off near the dirt.Been in the process of moving,so I haven't empty the old plant containers (roots/stocks) now after catching up on this thread,I have to wonder,,,if I had had another strain could I have grafted it to the left over root/stock of the harvested plant.I have several Frisian ducks I may start another strain and do some grafting myself.
The reason I mentioned grafting a male to a separate female,was I read if you make one branch of a female into a male you will need a separate female plant to make feminized seeds .the plant with the male branch will pollinate itself and cause inbreeding,those seeds are not used ever to continue the process.If it's two strains I've read it takes several generation to 'stablelize the new strain. There is also talk of genetic drift when grafting two strains. I believe green75 said the unknown strain was dominate.in green75 grafting.

With all my Frisian ducks grafting a normal cannabis with it may be interesting.May try it with a white widow BECAUSE the new Auto Duck is a cross between an 'auto white widow' and a Frisian duck'
Who knows what I'll get ? white plus the ducks purple flowers ,,,,a lavender widow duck.!?!? I really love all you people here you pull me down the rabbit hole with Alice everytime,,,

"Remember What The Doormouse Said,,,,Feed Your Head" (White Rabbit by the Jefferson Airplane)

[Weasel]

Someone was just asking me about that a couple days ago- about grafting a new top into a harvested stem. Intact root system, an already vegging top, once the graft takes she is ready to grow.
Seems kind of far fetched, but if a graft can take on a clone cutting while it simultaneously grows roots, as Komatchi said, it does seem at least like a slim possibility.

People self pollinate for seeds pretty regularly. I don't think there's any difference between hermie-ing a branch of a plant and pollinating it with itself, and -using that branch to pollinate a clone of itself, if you can understand what I'm trying to say.
Yes there is more genetic diversity if you use two completely different plants, but then you have a cross as opposed to a selfed plant. A cross, even with another pheno of the same strain, always brings more uncertainty. Seeds from a self pollinated plant still have a few different phenos to choose from, but not as many.
I don't know shit about breeding though, and even what I just said might be wrong.
I didn't read what happened to make you disappear there for a while. Maybe you posted it elsewhere and I missed it.?
I'm getting the feeling that grafting is quite easy. The advantage to doing it the way I am is you don't need a humidity tent as I think you do if you are doing it the 'regular' way with cuttings as opposed to living plants.

[PigSquishy]

Weasel Since this question has been brought up I have been scouring the books and information I have on breeding, I had this same question at one point... Take a male branch and cloning it onto the female plant, and while I have nothing which directly gives me this answer. However trying to find this answer walked me back through the things I do know, but to some degree have forgotten to perhaps look at again. The first is "stress" as of course the books and information always brings out the changes which can occur do to being stressed, some strains and plants can take lots and lots of stress and well as we all know there are others who at the first signs of stress have some sort of an issue. One thing which can happen as a result of stress is "mutations" and then it got me going back to the main point of breeding for seeds, you want to always start out with a true FF and that brought me right back in the book to the point of how to find and select a true FF to become a mother. Then I was brought back to the process of how to best select a male for the breeding project. Now let me make it clear this book's goal is to teach you to grow and breed stable strains with the hopes of bring able to bring it to market (commercial or private) where the end customers are happy with the end results they get when they use your seeds.

Well this may not mean anything to the standard grower, I keep coming back to the point in my mind... either someone would want the best genetics, the best of everything you are looking for... or you are looking for the randomness of bag seed outcomes. In the book they do discuss the randomness of cross pollination and how so often this doesn't work so well in nature hence why so much of the natural cannabis crops have such a high fatality rate when left to nature to do its thing, but at the same time only the traits which work for that plant in that environment will stand a real chance of survival which helps to weed out bad genetics in nature. However in the inside environment this doesn't hold true, and genetics good outdoors may not be the genetics you want inside, and thus we get right back to the selective process of making sure we are choosing the right mother and father, verses just randomly. By the time I got done researching this out trying to find the answer... I concluded that it seems to boil down to the point... If the idea of this works of grafting a male branch onto a female plant there is some sort of a major issue with it somehow beyond what I can figure out or find. So many stoners sitting out there trying to bring their own strain(s) to the market, pushing to win that next cannabis cup award, wanting to that guy you listen to and trust on YouTube, in the Forums, etc... if this actually worked out as well as one might hope it does, then it begs the question why aren't more people doing it or talking about it?

The gardening magazines for the year have been arriving and I have been going through them again to plan out what seeds to get, and in most of them they have a couple of these 5-In-1 trees, they will grow 5-Fruits on just one tree and honestly they aren't even that expensive, and I've seen them in their since I was a kid. But in all my years of going to the nursery, other people's gardens that were seriously HUGE, I've never in all my years ever seen anyone have one of those trees. My grandma had 36-different fruit trees, and when I asked about getting one of those she told me the head of the nursery she went too told her to stay away from those trees and don't ever plant one, so she told me the same anytime I ever had a question about them. Thinking of this thread I looked at them and wondered why is it always the same 5-fruits, why nobody ever has one... If this works so well in this fashion why isn't it being done more? Yet I was told by a friend at the nursery a few years back when my one fruit tree died down to the ground, broke off and then shoot up another tree, I assumed it was the fruit tree again, however I was told they use a fast growing root structure to then graft the much slower fruit tree onto the root system to get more fruit trees out the door into customers hands, thus the next tree coming up may be the tree from the actual root system, not the fruit tree I think it is.

Perhaps someone else can take this information and points and help to sort it out a bit more... but that is what has been on my mind relating to this point.

[sila'red'u-r]

I really appreciate this information.It was a National Geographic article which I read about an large amount of different fruits on one tree. At 63 I really don't have time to roll the dice on fruit (or nut) trees.My little 2.5 acres will most likely be my last home and there is no room for error,if I'm to enjoy eating (and tokin) the fruits of my labor.(ok that sounded cheezy even for me. lol)
I'm going to go with your and especially your Grandmas' advice(always bet on family)
Again I really appreciate the time you put into the research and advice.I intend to live to be a 100,but you may have saved me years of failure.Thank you so much.