Come join us! @Gatescss Club meeting with guest speaker are very own club & board member Elias Aparicio.
Grafting Succulents
Many plant growers may shy away from grafting for fear that it may be too difficult, risky or require too many tools to be achievable. This sentiment is far from the truth, with just a few tools you find around most households, any grower can begin grafting cactus and succulent plants with great success. Grafting has many practical benefits for hobbyists and professionals alike, and can also be used as an artistic outlet to create new forms not seen in nature.
Presentation
Elias Aparicio has been a member of the Gates Cactus and Succulent Society since the Summer of 2022 and has been growing cacti and succulents from his home in Yucaipa, California since 2021. Elias is a geologist by profession with over 14 years’ experience in large scale groundwater contamination studies and treatment plant design, and more recently as an Engineering Geologist in the Mining Division with the County of San Bernardino. As a native to southern California, he grew an appreciation for the native plants and desert landscapes of the nearby Mojave and Colorado Deserts. After joining the Gates Club in 2022, his collection of cacti ballooned from just a handful of small plants to hundreds, and now has two small hobbyist greenhouses, a 10-foot by 20-foot shade house, and a seedling germination tent. Elias enjoys growing plants with locality data from seed and grafting plants with an affinity for genus Ariocarpus, Turbinicarpus, Copiapoa, and Gymnocalycium. Elias started grafting plants in 2022 as a means to save dying plants and speed up the growth of plants to generate seed propagation. He believes that grafting can be an accessible tool for every level of grower to save, propagate, and speed up the growth of many of the popular families of cacti and succulents.
Gates Cactus and Succulent Society 