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[nobody]

Here is a link to a nice little site about Pereskiopsis spathulata. Has a lot of good info about general propagation and grafting.

www.pereskiopsis.com

3 Likes hereje, LIBERTYNY and medolon like this.

[TBM]

Great resource!

1 Like LIBERTYNY likes this.

[New Wisdom]

Yay! I love peres and grafting. 

[Sunshine]

Roots on baby pere cuttings

1 Like chums of chance likes this.

[Shpongle Lover]

Thank you for this great find!  I just bought a half dozen cuttings and this information will insure I get them off to a great start upon receipt!

S.L.

[happyconcacti]

Experiment: indole-3-butyric acid rooting hormone

12 pereskiopsis (species name unknown, probably not spathulata) treated with 0.1% indole-3-butyric acid in the following manner:
basal leaves removed, base dipped in water, then dipped in 0.1% indole-3-butyric acid, then excess acid tapped/shaken off.

9 pereskiopsis planted without indole-3-butyric acid.

Soil mixture:
9 parts all purpose potting soil (vigiro potting mix, 6 mo. Feeding)
2 parts per lite
1 part vermiculite
1 part worm castings
2 Tablespoons gardening lime

All Peres were potted approximately 1" (2.5cm) into the soil.
All were watered thoroughly then placed in propagation tank.

General observations:
Of the 21 pereskiopsis, there were in varying states of health: from leaves completely yellow and wrinkled to very green and healthy. I tried to put some of each "state of health" in each experimental group. 

Results and discussion:
http://sharetheseeds.me/forum/index.php?topic=259.msg6297#msg6297

Picture:
(9/12) indole-3-butyric acid treated on the left
(9/9) untreated on the right

5 Likes Mandrake, TBM, Sunshine, gator and LIBERTYNY like this.

[New Wisdom]

Cool happyconcafe.  I've noticed that they root in prettymuch the same ammount of time with or without a rooting hormone.  These plants are probably the easiest in the world to root.  Glad to see somebody documenting it though.

Let us know what happens.

[Sunshine]

I'm betting that it naturally contains a lot of IBA.^
Personally I've never had trouble rooting them without using IBA. But I am curious to see if it helps.
+1 for a cool experiment. If we keep doing stuff like this STS is going to blossom into an awesome knowledge base.

[happyconcacti]

Update on the indole-3-butyric experiment:

(10/12) treated with hormone are showing signs of growth
(7/9) untreated are showing signs of growth


On another note:
When I was potting the Peres, I knocked off a 1" (2.5 cm) branch of one of the Peres (see picture below). I thought maybe it was too small to propagate. It had a few leaves still. I treated it with hormone and potted it. It is showing signs of growth. Moral of the story: it appears (from a sample of one) that Peres can propagate from very small cuttings/stems.

Why is this potentially significant? Well if they can propagate from 1" cuttings and you have say 6x 6" cuttings you could potentially propagate 36 Peres instead of 6.

[New Wisdom]

I've done this before without any hormones. It will be way better for you to grow the bigger sections. When you make 1" cuttings with them the pups they grow are tiny, weak, thin and not suited for grafting.  It would take away from the point of having the pereskiopsis in my opinion. Plus it would take them a couple months just to grow an inch since they wouldn't have any room to photosynthesize. And you'd probably have to wait about 6-12 months for them to get to a thickness that you can graft on. Anyways in 6 months with just 1 6" cutting you could end up with 30. So you're best option will be to stick with the big cuttings. You will be happy later on when you have nice thick pere stock for grafting.

[happyconcacti]

Anyways in 6 months with just 1 6" cutting you could end up with 30.

How?

Also, I'd absolutely love to see evidence that supports the claims above. Would definitely save me the trouble of an experiment.

Evidence:

Kada, from kadasgarden, appears to use short stalks (2"-3") for propagation (no mention of growth rates or potential drawbacks):
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/8200828

A different (2"-3") recommendation, also states that 1" cuttings take much longer:
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/17994848

"6 inches seems to be the golden length... it prevents excessive pupping and give a nice boost to the growth."
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/17561995#17561995


Regards,
Hcc

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[New Wisdom]

When Growing outside in the full sun in propper condition it can grow an inch in a week. When making cuttings and planting them you will get exponetial growth. I've done this before and that's why I said it. There's no documentation for it but I can explain the math.

Start with 1 6" plant.  Grow for 6 weeks now you have a 12" cutting.
Cut in half, 2 6" plants, Grow for another 6 weeks and now you have 2 12" (or maybe shorter like 10") cuttings
Cut those in half and now you have 4 plants. Grow for 6 weeks.
Cut those in half and now you have 8 plants. Grow for 6 weeks.
Cut those in half. Now you have 16 plants. Grow for six weeks.
Cut those in half, now you have 32 plants.

All in 7.5 months you went from 1 to 32 cuttings. They may not all be 6" but they will be around 4"-6" if the growth conditions were right.   The time frames aren't exact on this and there's a lot of factors involved that could make it go slower or faster, but this is the basic idea of how  what i'm talking about works.
These plants grow like weeds. You will see what i mean in the coming months

And I was just giving my opinion about what works best if you want good grafting stock based on my experience. I don't mean to chalange any ideas that you have. I've just used the short pieces for propagation in the past and they've always grown extremely slow and very skinny. You will see what i mean when that one starts to grow. Compare it to a full 6" cutting and the 6" cutting will probably grow 10x faster than the short one and will be thicker.

(Edited the math on this. It was not 64 cuttings it was 32) Add just another 6 weeks onto it though and you double that up to 64. So it would be 9 months ffor 64 plants and 7.5 months for 32 plants.

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[happyconcacti]

^^^Awesome! Another stellar post from New Wisdom!^^^

I also found a few sources above that completely agree with what you said. It seems that growth rates are greatly inhibited with cuttings shorter than 6".

Thank you NW!

1 Like New Wisdom likes this.

[New Wisdom]

It is interesting though to grow plants from small cuttings like this. Another thing I have been doing is taking center cuts and laying them down flat. They usually sprout 2-4 pups if they're a good length and then root all along the bottom. But just like with any cacti, the more pups that are growing, the slower the growth will be on each one.

My main prefference is growing a 6" top cutting upright above all. All experimentation aside.

1 Like happyconcacti likes this.

[cantharis]

I have just bought some P. spathulata.  Only had them a couple of days but they do no seem happy  -  in fact they seem to be wilting rather.  Not all plants can take the heat of a Spanish summer.