I know people graft cannabis cuttings for various reasons but has anyone done so with the primary goal to give very young plants a huge boost from having a fully mature root system? Would not having to grow its own root system concentrate all its energy on upper growth? Of course, it must recover from the grafting process first.
If this works well then one could reuse healthy roots, after every harvest, to expedite maturation of the next crop.
Very interested in the answers to this one…
I’ve been thinking about trying to graft cuts from different strains onto a single mother plant . . . never considered re-using roots. Interesting.
It does\will work, break out your scalpels, grafting tape and patience. What’s your end goal?, keep a single mother plant with multiple grafted strains? or trying for disease resistance? or think its gonna be a huge shortcut in plant growth?
I’ll put my $20 on fast vegging/flip some clones… Just stinky A$$ opinion.
The goal is to give baby plants an advantage for ultrafast growth by providing them fully matured root systems so they can concentrate all their energy on upper growth rather than expending energy growing roots.
Maybe it’s a silly idea vs cloning but clones could be grafted onto their own root system too. Clones have to heal from the cutting anyway so wouldn’t reusing their own roots make sense? At least for single clones. I think it’s worth trying.
The time it takes to heal a graft and the risks…I’m a gambling man…what you want is clones, coco, aggressive feeding and lighting.
Nothing is a silly idea, run the experiment for your own sanity.
Clones if you’ve ever done them, may start slow, then its not increments a day, its full-flights once they get in stride - you need to keep up with the rapid growth…so in my honest opinion, its more about can the grower keep up and in front of it more than it is about the plant growing more rapidly.
Also opinion, Id think best use of and old root system is for keeping a multi strain mother, more than building a supercharger.
Prove me wrong, I’ll happily apologize and stand corrected.
Interesting thought, but I have one issue. The donor plant providing the roots would either still be using them or at end of life from flower. In both cases it negates the jump start I would think. Not sure you can easily reveg it and the hormones from flower would be an interesting issue for your baby plant.
A better answer might be using General Hydroponics Rapid Start. Get root growth going in overdrive. I use it in both pots and hydro and you can see the results clearly. Good product but by no means a must.
I think your right here. I saw a few links on grafter here. In one case just to see if several strain limbs per plant as an experiment. I think it did ok.
I thought hormones were controlled solely by upper growth rather than being influenced by the root system. I’ll have to research that.
You might be right. Let me know if you learn something. Cool subject !!
At least two hormone types are produced in root tips (cytokinins and auxins) but I don’t know how these affect grafting. I’ll research this further when I have more cognitive energy.
I’ve been around for a bit, but I honestly learn some tidbit or other every time I log in. Definitely have gotten some major good ideas here!
The whole advantage to grafting is to shorten the selection time in fruit trees. Imagine if your pheno hunt took 6 years to wait out like an apple or peach tree. Then graft the keeper cut back onto the root stock of all the nonkeeper trees. It saves 6years of grow out time.
Cannabis grafts very easy, I have done it many times. Anyone who has mended a broke off branch back to plant can see how easily cannabis can repair itself. Thicker branches that are getting woody are particularly easy to graft. Thin ones (like cloning) are harder because they tend to damage easier while slipping the graft, or wrapping it tightly afterwards in my experience.
I am an avid fruit grower and am very proficient at bench grafting scions, slip bud grafts, and making frankenfruit trees out of old overgrown trees. Cannabis grafts easier than any fruit tree in my experience.
But I don’t see the advantage in a plant that grows as quickly as cannabis; and that we can manipulate so easily with light cycles. Seedlings have hyper vigor and the grafting process would be slower than just sprouting out a 12 pack of seeds and selecting a keeper. They reveg (monster crop) if you don’t have a clone. And if you find a keeper you can clone it and perpetually copy AND multiply it as needed. I have done it just to see if I could, and that’s a fun reason to do it. But not a practical one in my humble opinion.
Honestly the only reason grafting cannabis would make sense is if you were legally licensed provider and your state was anal retentive about plant counts. 4 plants max, are you kidding me? Or like my state Wa you have to have a big brother WiFi camera on your count limit 
to be legal w a green card.
Then having a big ole mama plant with 20-30 flavors grafted onto it would make sense.
But honestly taking each strain down as selfed seeds would be easier (to me) than keeping the TLC on a mama like that all the time.
noddykitty1, et al: Thank you for your learned/experienced advice. You and others here convinced me that grafting cannabis is very limitedly advantageous and only for highly specific needs.
I appreciate everyone’s thoughts and advice. I love learning new things!!