Hello dragon fruit enthusiasts! This is Jay, with Hybridizing Dragon Fruit, where we teach YOU how to make your very own dragon fruit varieties! Today’s tip of the day is about: Tip Grafting. This video was a request from one of our members at HDF, in which I am going to share with you, my favorite way to graft my hybrids. Let’s begin…

Let’s start by getting everything we need together. This is surgical tape. It’s clear, has micro holes, and generally sticks just right. It’s my favorite to use by far. You also want to be sure to have some alcohol or hydrogen peroxide on hand so you can sterilize your blade before making any cuts.

Now, normally I would like to do a graft with a new growth, but unfortunately I broke off one of my recent grafts, and have to reattach it. So, I'm going to show you how to do that right now. You're going to want to take your sterilized knife and make a nice even cut right near the tip like that.

Make sure it's nice and flat, there we go. And here is the graft that broke. I get a nice flat cut right there and before I even start, lets get some tape ready. I like to use surgical tape. Going to put two on just from the start just enough to get this in place.

All right and line that up for now. We're just going to line it up making sure that's approximately in the center. Make sure that's on there nice, just like that. It does NOT have to be dead center, just so you know. Once you've got it anchored on there, what you're going to want to do now is start making sure it's down really tight!

Whenever you're doing a graft like this you have to make sure it's extremely tight! That's what's going to ensure that the graft takes a nice tight connection ensures a nice mechanical, err, mechanically strong connection later on. There we go. Nice and snug! Now often times, what happens with this tape is; it likes to peel off after a little while. So, you're going to want to put some across too, to kind of hold that on there...

Now, the nature of this surgical tape is that it does peel off it's one of the reasons I like it. It holds just long enough for the graft to take, then it starts to peel off, so it's not a danger to you when trying to remove it. You don't have to worry about yanking your graft off, as well. All right, I'm going to give that a go with one more strip across just to make sure that doesn't come undone. All right, nice and snug! And there you go!

Lets get it right here... and we're just gonna, yank, yank, yank, yank, YIP them, right there. This is a tip graft.

All right, well what I have here, is a two-sided growth. It's not exactly ideal for this type of thing but on short notice it will do. The important thing is, we cut it nice and level here. Like that. So we can provide a nice flat surface for the graft to attach to. Here we go, we're going to make sure our tip graft here, is nice and level, as well. We're just going to take this guy here and apply a little bit of tape, so we can get it initially placed.

Oh boy... behave. There we go. Oh, and I yanked that right off... that's okay. Put you right on there... yes I got butter fingers, this is not easy to do on camera! Haha. All right, that is actually looking fairly good!

So, here is what you'll do if your seedling is very small. Too small to tape down. First, we're going to cut our root stock. Alright, get a nice clean cut, and then we're going to do the same with our seedling. Nice clean cut here and the surface tension from putting these two together will hold it in place.

What you want to do is; you want to get this generally over the center like that. Nice fresh cut like this, and to push down on it. Make sure that's nice and aligned and you're going to leave it just like that…

Put it on a shelf, put it somewhere nearby, where it's not going to get disturbed in any way. And as long as it's indoors, like I'm doing here, you don't even need to throw a bag on it! You can leave it just like that, and it will take! It's one of the simplest ways to do a graft... one of my favorites too!