I haven't updated for awhile. I'll copy/paste my notes from this year's plants.
My dad wants to graft next year so I made a recording of our process for him and included a link below.
Cherokee Purple and Mortgage Lifter on Maxifort rootstock.
Test fit graft clips April 8th and 2.8mm were already tight. Will have to graft a week early, April 9th.
Grafted all plants (14 of each) 9:30am April 9th, 26 days after beginning germination. Plants were all larger than last year, 2.8mm clips on everything.
Grafting video:
https://youtu.be/OPzKGdr2Hrs
10 minutes open domes on Sunday. All plants actually looked decent-good.
15 minutes open domes on Monday. Looking a bit top heavy.
30 minutes open domes on Tuesday, cut a few excessive leaves off plants that were being weighed down by them. Only need to leave 1 or 2 leaves on each scion when trimming for graft.
Another half hour on Wednesday.
Thursday opened domes for an hour and at the end gave each plant a small squirt of 50% diluted Evolve liquid organic 3-2-2 fertilizer.
Friday also only comfortable opening domes for an hour
Saturday morning opened domes and put in table with light on. Light on for and hour and a half. Lids back on after 2 hours.
Sunday morning opened domes and lights for 2.5 hours. Shut off lights and put 12 strong plants in third tray. Covered wilting plants and left third tray uncovered.
Monday, took covers off and after 3 hours, moved 6-7 wilting plants under a dome, left the rest out. 3 plants out of 28 look like they may not make it at this point, will give them a couple more days to prove me wrong.
Tuesday opened dome and lights on at 7:30 am. Only two plants look weak this morning.
Wednesday 26 out of 28 survivors. All survivors getting 16hrs of light at about 10" above tops. Feeding diluted organic fert as needed.
Friday, day 13 post graft moved all plants into soil. Alternating between fan and no fan. Low speed at this point, still 16hrs light, bottom feeding.
April 30th still 16hrs of light, bottom feeding half a jug of water per tray, fan on a few hours a day. Plants are restoring foliage removed during graft.
May 11th moved grow table/light into the dining room and will begin rotating plants into the sunlight during the day, possibly spend a bit of time outdoors on nice days.
Began hardening plants on May 21st 1-2 hrs at a time. 43 days since grafting, 69 days from germination.
Planted out somewhere around May 22nd. I didn't have much weather to harden and as a result all plants for scalded from the sun. Wind storm end of May broke off some limbs and broke one Cherokee plant in half. Replaced the broken Cherokee with one of my spare plants. All plants took about 2 weeks to bounce back from the sunburn.
Noticed first tomato growing June 18th.
July 15th update, plants have topped the cages at 4ft. Many flowers and tomatoes growing on both varieties.
July 17th, loads of fruit set on both varieties.