Anne's new grafting set-up 11-1-13

[aclum]

Hi Steve and Delerium,

Thanks!

Steve,

I think "passionate mind" might be a nice way of saying "compulsive/obsessive" ! I am rather obsessed at this point and have made a couple of (what I think are) significant improvements today. Still need to tweek a few things and then I'll post some more photos.


Delerium,

That is one great looking graft! I think maybe it deserves its own thread where it could get more views. Beautiful, balanced plant with the two leaf types. How large is your container and what are the varieties?

Anne

[Delerium]

Hi Anne - its Gary'O Sena and Kellogg's Breakfast. It's just in a 4 inch pot

[rwsacto]

Anne,

I hope at some point you can share the range of conditions you find best for grafting, i.e the best temperature, humidity, air flow, lighting, CO2, etc.

Thanks,
Rick

[aclum]

'Hi Rick (et. al.),

I'll certainly post my best "growing parameters" (sp?) if I ever figure them out !

I've come across the parameters for cannabis grow rooms on various websites, but haven't been able to find them again so far. Once I find them, I'll try them for a starting point. There are some very interesting articles/posts on the subject "out there."

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I'm attaching a set of photos showing my latest healing chamber "improvements." The changes are a new arrangement for the various "input devices," a new arrangement for the CO2 generator, and a modification to the connections between the "input devices" and chamber.

The first two photos show my new devices/chamber connections. I remembered having a bunch of unused 55 gallon drum siphons out in our storage shed. I thought I could use the flexible hose on the siphons to make an offset connection on one fitting without needing to use pvc elbows. It turned out that the hose just fit perfectly over my 1/2" pvc pipe with just enough looseness to make it slide easily, but still stay in place. So lightbulbs went off in my head, and I came up with the quick disconnect connector sleeves you see in my photos (one photo with the slides up, and one with the slides down). One of my prior aggravations had been having to remove certain elements in order to access the chamber's interior. With the slide connectors, I can just push up the sleeves, get some slack in my temp probes coming in from the top and then move the chamber over so I can open it.

I also gathered all the major "input devices" in a tray placed on top of the lights as shown in the next photo. From left to right we have 1) the chiller fan that feeds into the chamber through an elbow to help direct the chilled air towards the center of the chamber, 2) the chiller with fan on top, 3) the ultrasonic humidifier, 4) the humidifier fan that feeds into the chamber through an elbow to direct to humidifier vapor towards the center of the chamber. With everything in the tray, I can move everything at once and it's all much tidier. If I lower the lights, I can just put some supports between the tray and lowered light tops to compensate. If I raise the lights, I can just pop in longer pvc pipes or longer sleeves.

The next picture is a detail of the chiller parts. The side fan is just a computer fan that fits snugly into a plastic flower part. The chiller fan itself is another computer fan that is just press fit into a plastic root beer bottle bottom part. It fits on top of the main chiller unit with the exposed tabs (above the fan) meshed with the chiller top edge. The fans are wired together so they go on at the same time and are connected to the temperature controller cold socket.

My "cooling agent" is a plastic jar filled with ice and salt that I keep in the freezer when not in use. I have to have 4 of these containers at the moment, so I can keep back-ups in the freezer and rotate them as needed. BTW, I found out the hard way that coke cans don't work for this purpose !

Finally, I have an overall view of the set-up, showing all of the above, plus my lights on a timer, the chiller indicator light, and the heating pad control and the humidity and temperature controllers.

In this photo and others, you can see my new arrangement of the CO2 packets. I made a little mesh "carrier" to keep the baking soda and citric acid mix more spread out for more exposure to the vapor. With the hanging teabag I had before everything sank to the bottom of the bag. I think I'm going to refine this a bit and move it back behind the fan elbow where it will still get the humidity, but won't block light to the plants.

Guess that's all for the moment. I have at least one other semi-major improvement to do..... but need to order a couple of small parts first.

Anne

[aclum]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Thought I'd post a couple of photos while I take a little break from cooking!

I've got a photo of my latest input device set-up. I simplified the chiller fan and moved everything into a single, larger, container so I wouldn't have the humidifier fan hanging off the side!

Also a photo of the Chamber with its current occupants - various cuttings from the garden than have all taken root nicely. I'll be using them in grafting experiments. The tray the cuttings are in has been elevated closer to the lights than they were in the last photo. Also trying out a 105 rootstock in the chamber for comparison purposes. I dug out my old photo darkroom lamps and put some CFLs in them for more light from the side. I ordered a couple of 168 LED red/blue grow lights from TMart that I'll replace the CFL's with when they arrive. (So I don't have to cool down the chamber so often ). I repositioned the CO2 generator pad holder right under the input for the humidifier - seems to work better now.

Next photo is a line-up of my 4 RST-04-105-T rootstock seedlings taken 11-23. That day I put #2 into my chamber and took it out today for a comparision photo. While #2 was in the chamber, the others were either under lights inside or out on the patio in nice weather getting some sun and fresh air. #2 seems to be somewhat lankier than the controls, but I think that overall, it's doing a little better than the controls. (I'd just watered #2 but hadn't gotten to the controls yet today).

Anne

[aclum]

Hi,

One more photo of "our friend" 105- #2 above. I decided to use it for some grafting tomorrow and wanted to put it in a larger cup and give it some water today in preparation.

I think this is the first plant I've grown from seed entirely in Optisorb DE with occasional watering with dilute Miracle Grow. Although others have posted photos of their DE-grown roots, thought you all might like to see one in a "before" (small cup) and "after" (after being liberated from the small cup). Needless to say, I'm really impressed by the root growth in the Optisorb!

BTW, the 105 seeds were stated Oct 23 and germinated from Oct 28-Nov 1 - so they've been up and growing for just about a month now.

FWIW!

Anne

[Delerium]

That's why i like the big granular DE over the sandy one. Better root growth and so much easier to transplant. So what happened with the secret experiment ?

[aclum]

Hi Delerium,

I had sort of mixed results with the secret experiment. One or two sort of worked but not all. I haven't had great results with the rootless grafting so far. I think I might just be too impartient. I was also wondering, if I guessed correctly on what you'd done, about roots from the scion negating the benefits of the rootstock????? I'll get back to experimenting with that soon, but in the meantime, I've sort of gone off on this other tangent!

Here are some more photos of my latest goings on for you and any others who might be interested.

As you'll see, I changed up my grafting set up again, moving it back to its original location (no longer under the fluorescent lights) and rearranged the top configuration.

I took the plunge and did a 5-way graft on 105 #2 pictured yesterday. The scions are a bit small for the rootstock, but I'm hoping for the best. They are from a bunch of random seeds from old packets I hadn't used in years that I started a while back. Sorry the lighting's so bad in the photo - forgot to turn off some lights I had on for the grafting process.

My chamber is covered with the rubber mesh "shade cloth cozy" and then a black plastic garbage bag. I've got a plastic lid partially covering my humidifier fan to decrease the airflow and have "turned down the volume" on the humidifier itself so that it doesn't get too breezy in the chamber.

I've got the humidity control set so that it keeps the humidity between 85 and 95% and the temp at 22 plus or minus 1.5 degrees centigrade. I have an indicator light hooked up to the chiller controls so I can take a container of crushed ice and salt water out of the little cooler and put it in the chiller bottle when I need to cool the system done. HOWEVER, it just so happens (pure luck) that with my settings, when the light comes on, it seems to coincide with the humidifier and fan kicking on - which brings the temp down to the acceptable range pretty rapidly. As I result, I haven't really had to use the chiller at all.

Outside air can enter the chamber when the humidifier and fan are on and the inputs for the chiller and its fan are open so there's some air exchange via this route. Since the plants can't utilize CO2 in the dark, there's no point in using it now or in having a totally sealed environment to keep CO2 from escaping. Loss of humidity is or heat are not a concern as they're kept stable with the controllers. So there should be no need to open the chamber for a while. At least that's my theory, and this little experiment should prove me right or wrong. I'lll probably peek under the cover a couple of times, but I'll just leave everything as is until Monday morning when I'll remove the black plastic (but have the shade cloth remaining).

Anyway, the photos are of 1) the graft about ready to go into the chamber, 2) the overall set-up, 3) chiller detail, and 4) the cooler box for my chiller bottles.

Enjoy (hopefully)!

Anne

[ddsack]

Looking forward to hearing how your five way graft does. Thanks for posting all the detailed pictures and info, it's really fun to read about your setup. Sounds like you enjoy all the tinkering!

[aclum]

Hi ddsack (forgot your real name),

Thanks for the encouragement! And, yes, I do enjoy "tinkering" with stuff.

Not surprisingly the 5 way graft failed. The scions were just too much of a mismatch with the rootstock. Undeterred, I started a couple more grafts - one using one of the 105's with suckers from the garden of African Queen, Eva Purple Ball, and Dester as scions; and one with one of my NAR cuttings as a rootstock with one "branch" left growing and the other branch with an Aunt Ginny's Purple scion from a garden sucker grafted onto it. I think these should do a lot better (they can't do much worse )!

On the grafting set up itself.....

Doing a bit of web research, I found that the plants need a lot of light to fully utilize the available CO2 (up to a point - they can overdose). My chamber was heating up too fast - requiring frequent cooling - with all the extra fluorescent lighting I'd added, so I decided to try some LEDs for the additional light I needed. Researching LED grow lights for propagation, I came across this very interesting article.....

http://hortamericas.blogspot.com/2011/10/led-horticultural-grow-lights-make.html

It's basically a case study for Phillips grow lights, but it's got some interesting info. The part that really caught my eye - esp. in relation to my chamber was:
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The fogging nozzles filled the entire room with fog. There cuttings received no direct water misting or spraying.
“By using the fog we eliminated droplets from forming on the foliage, which greatly reduced the chance for Botrytis and loss of cuttings,” Versolato said. “Gravity caused the fog to descend on the cuttings and the fog kept the cuttings turgid.
“The LED lights generate heat, but nothing like other lights available for growing. For this reason the Preforma plugs remained moist and we didn’t need to apply any additional water.”
The cuttings rooted in three to four weeks. Versolato said in the greenhouses the cuttings root in four to five weeks and occasionally take longer for some species.
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This sort of ties into this thread, and my recent posts on the "great deal on humidifier" and "grow lights" threads.

This all makes me think I'm sort of getting things on the right track
(for my circumstances). What I'm especially pleased with is the fact that the covered grafting situation that's going on now seems to be in a state of dynamic equilibrium (hope I'm using that term correctly) or homeostatis (ditto). I put an indicator light on my heating set-up (already have one for the chiller). With the ambient room temp and my humidifier, the heater and chiller never come on. As the heat builds up in the chamber (room temp is higher than the ideal chamber temp), the humidity goes down so the humidifier kicks on which brings the temp back on to the desired range. Haven't paid close attention, but it seems like the humidifier goes on for a minute or two (at the most) every 45 minutes or so.

As I mentioned in the "great deal on humidifier" thread post I did yesterday, I bought a second CVS humidifier on sale so I can start an additional chamber for seed starting, cuttings, more grafting or whatever while the first chamber is tied up for a week or so with the current grafts.

Anne

[Delerium]

Anne the reason your 5 way graft failed is because you did to many grafts at one time. Do 2 at a time let them heal let the plant grow and continue to add grafts later on to new branches. Here is an old photo i did back in sept. Like our earlier conversation there is an easier way to do multiple variety grafts then once that's done you can change the root stock to whatever you want later. As you can see from the picture the Petiole grafts on the bottom have healed and no longer need the clips and i add grafts later. But that's just way to much work.

[aclum]

Hi Delerium,

Interesting comments..... the failure could have been because of too many grafts, but I'm sure the grafting would have failed even if it had just been one or two as the scion and rootstocks were such mismatches and, with the long scion stems, gravity was working against things.

The new 3-way graft on 105 is doing fine so far. But the single graft on the double leader NAR is looking sort of iffy at the moment.

So, how many grafts are you looking for on one plant? I'm still not entirely sure of what you're actually doing. Sounds like a "secret method" graft that you then add on to with more grafts after the first ones are healed and eventually, if you want, put the whole thing on a disease tolerant or resistant rootstock?

The 105's are interesting to me. The plants are a little over 5 weeks old and so far they haven't produced any suckers - just alternating leaves. If they don't produce suckers at all, I'm not sure about using it as a "mother plant" for grafting in the late winter-early spring as I'd planned. I'll have to see if I can get a leaf to root. Otherwise I guess I'll be starting all of my rootstock from seed. Don't you have a rootstock plant or two that you're planning to keep through the winter? If so, are you getting any suckers?

(the above should probably be in your triple graft thread .... but oh well .)

Anne

[aclum]

Hi Again,

Here are a couple of photos of the 105 grafts I mentioned above......

As you can see the 5 way graft was an abysmal failure but I did just notice some little suckers forming the leaf croches! So I call that a positive result (I'm the eternal optimist, I guess). I'll probably just let the suckers grow out and possibly re-graft onto some the the original branches.

The other photo is of the 105 with a 3 way graft. I think today is day 5 and (I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but...) I think it'll be a keeper. It's just got the mesh covering on the chamber and I reset the humidity to 80% plus/minus 5% down from 90% plus/minus 5%. I'll be removing the mesh later today, and if there's no setback, I've move things to the set-up under the fluorescent light tomorrow (but just room lighting for a day) and start some new 105 grafts in the dark chamber.

Anne

[Larry636]

Newbe question: Has anyone tried covering the graft site with DE to provide moisture during the healing process?

Larry

[aclum]

Hi and Welcome Larry!

Yes, I've tried this and it can work although I don't think it's the best way to go if you want to take advantage of the rootstock disease resistance. With the graft joint under soil level, the scion can form roots, negating the advantages of the rootstock.

However, you can "unbury" the grafting ★★★★★★★★ once the graft is healed - and I think you probably have to do this if you want to remove the clip (although I suppose some of the silicon clips might pop off on their own nderground). At least for me, the process is sort of a bother and there are better ways to do things. But you might want to go ahead and give it a try just for the fun of it and it might work better for you than it did for me.

It's great that you're thinking outside the box!

Good luck and happy grafting!
Anne