I wanted to try mentor grafting on roselle and cranberry hibiscus to see if I could get more fun colours and some cold tolerance from cranberry hibiscus onto roselle in future offsprings. I didn’t have any new seedlings to do it properly, so i just swapped main stems on each plant with each other, leaving maybe too much growth on the root stock(?). My question is does it still count as mentor grafting or does it need to be followed exactly? Maybe this is a stupid question, I’m brand new to this and just wanted to try with what I had available.
The grafts are 3 weeks old and leaves on both top stems are growing happily.
Wow very cool work ! So in theory its necessary to ‘plant the seeds’ of the scion for it to work. But nevertheless you could prune the scion leaves except the 2-3 at the apex, and see if you find anything in the seedlings. I would do the mentor pruning and see if you can get them to cross. In China this was done with goji and capsicum, the grafting+pruning prior to crossing, which allowed them to cross sexually. But again that still may not work well without seedlings as pupils. See what you can find in the seedlings you may still some some effects just don’t expect necessarily a high rate.
The way it can work without seed is doing interfamily grafting. Then the stress will be so strong that they will transform a stabilized plant.
Yea herbaceous grafts tend to dry out much easier. Usually they are healed in pots under a humidity dome. Some thicker herbaceous grafts you could wrap in parafilm like a fruit tree.
I agree with @Ascentropic, I don’t think you can strictly call it a mentor graft though there may still be ways to facilitate greater gene flow into the scion.
As somebody with no grafting experience, who has learned pretty much everything I know about grafting from this forum and offshoots of it, this is very inspiring to me! Maybe I will have something to report soon
