Just realized I’m an idiot and could save my dying photoperiod cuttings by grafting. I’m terrible at rooting things, but great at grafting.
I’ve got only two choices to graft onto though - big vigorous lush autoflower plants in flower, or very young and just transplanted photoperiods.
If I graft a photoperiod onto a blooming autoflower under about 18h lighting, will it bloom like the host plant, or veg like it normally would under that light cycle? Because I need it to veg, but would much prefer to graft to the autos.
I don’t even know the gender of most of the young photoperiods, and I have plans for them.
I’ll try some of everything tomorrow if no one has an answer.
I would suspect that IF your photo plant is currently under Vegging light schedule, once its grafted onto the auto mother plant, the photo would continue to veg under 18 hr light schedule and would likely start flowering once the light schedule changes.
The other issue is, once the auto life cycle is done, will the photo take over and continue? Or would it also end its life?
This is gonna be interesting, and I would love to find out the results.
My money is on the graph taking. The photo period plant following what ever light cycle you give it .With the rootsock eventually dieng back premature probably around 100-130 days of being planted.
I dunno just a guess.
Also super interested please continue to share your progress.
I think you guys nailed it from what I’ve read previously. The graft should maintain its photoperiod nature and the auto should retain its timed self destruct feature so you’ll need to do something with the grafted piece again at the end of the auto’s life if you plan to keep it.
I think you’re gonna be okay with the photo limb grafted on. I can’t find it right now but I had previously read someone’s journal/experiment where they kept one limb in a separate “room” of the tent and gave them different light schedules, the limbs independently flowered or stayed in veg apart from each other. Good luck with it
Yes, the cuttings and plants are under veg lighting right now.
I’ll go ahead with some frankenplant creations today. I will try multiple configurations and report back. I’ll use fairly young autoflowers, and I’ve kept them alive a long time past an early harvest of their flowers before, so they ought to easily live long enough for these cuttings to revive and then grow a bit so I can try again at rooting.
@Organical now that you menon it, I remember seeing that person’s experiment, and it does make me think it will keep vegging.
I would graft it on the auto and when it took, I’d wrap the area with black plastic, twisty ties and pack with proper rooting medium and wait fer roots.
So far, all the photo grafts onto autos have failed. One of the two grafted onto photos is still alive, photo below. Those cuttings were very much on their last legs, so I intend to repeat this experiment in a few weeks when plant size aligns to allow me fresh photo cuttings. Unless someone else beats me to it
Here are some demo pics of my grafting choice. These are not of the actual cuttings, have to move to fast to take photos during the actual process. On some of them I ended up taking a triangular slice out for a better fit, rather than just splitting the stem. I tried both tape and parrafin tape.
One thing I think didn’t work out well was grafting onto very fresh new growth.
One thing I thought was an awesome innovation is that the cut mother pushed out a big drop of sap immediately, and I dipped the end of the cutting into it to keep it moist.
I’ve got this successful photo onto blooming auto graft now, just waiting to see what it does.
Lights in the room are on 20/4 right now, and I’ve got its parent in there too for comparison.
I also had the very delightful idea that maybe grafting an auto onto a photo could get me a reveg. I’ve got a couple of autos that are toward the end of bloom which I’d really like another chance to breed with. And I also happen to have some photo plants that don’t matter, so I gave it a try.
Alright, sample size of 1, but the answer is it bloomed.
It was a photo/auto cross, grafted onto an auto. The mom of the cutting is still happily vegging in the same grow room. All the pistils are brown because I let the pollen loose for another project a few days ago.
It’s even more interesting when I think about the experiment I’ve seen where someone showed that one branch of a photoperiod plant could be made to bloom if isolated in a different light schedule from the rest of the plant.
