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Old March 13, 2019   #14
zendog
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: VA-7a
Posts: 121
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Issues with fruit quality seems surprising to me. My grafted tomatoes did a much better job of maintaining their size and quality than the ungrafted tomatoes I grew right beside them last year. I think the best thing people can do is try grafted and ungrafted plants of the same type side by side as a real controlled test. When I did that with 2 different types of rootstocks, plus a control plant on its own roots, I was sold, at least for my growing conditions. But if we had less disease, a shorter season or other considerations I might not bother.

Like Jeff, my grafted plants kept producing good size tomatoes right up until frost. My ungrafted plants generally produced smaller fruit, particularly the beefsteaks, as the season progressed. Grafted plants didn't show the same amount of reduction and the plants I had on Maxifort (very vigorous) showed no decline in size at all. So it isn't just the disease resistance that makes it worthwhile for me.

I didn't graft my cherry tomatoes last year and they did pretty well on their own roots, but I plan to graft Black Cherry and Fred's Lucky Tiger this year so it will be interesting to see how they do and if it is worth it for the smaller fruited types. That is this year's experiment.

The one thing grafting didn't solve for me was BER issues with Opalka. I was really hoping a better root system might help, but I didn't see a difference.
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