They take a while, something between a fruit tree and a 30 year government bond. But hold on, there's hope. In the Texas desert with infrequent rain, a button 1 inch across may be ten years old. In home cultivation, you can get this in two or 3 years. Therefore a 5 year old button under prime cultivation conditions would be eating size. And yes, once the carrot like root is established new buttons rapidly form from the sliced portion, if cut at ground level or just above. These new pups are fairly large within a year.

Grafting is a way of cutting small seedlings and growing them on faster growing rootstock. Using this method, we are going from raisin size babies to 3 inch buttons in 4 or 5 months, a huge increase. However these spoiled little critters have had almost no time to produce alkaloids, so the best thing to do with this technique is to re-cut the grown graft and allow it to re-establish its own roots. The beauty of this method lies in the ability to increase one's stock plant supply considerably within one growing season. Starting from seed, one can graft the babies a year later, grow for a year on graft, then another on its own roots, or about 3 yrs total until dinner. When grafting seedlings, the crown is grafted first, then (tip of the day) the tiny roots can be grafted onto another graft stock, upside down, and will also shoot forth several new heads in a season, thus making several buttons from each seed. The possibilities are exciting.

Check the current "Best of High Times" for a story which explains the graft technique.