Best grafted tomato varieties?

[Delerium]

We love to make curries (partly because my family side is Sri Lankan) & my wife is filipino. We might make something like this today or tomorrow.

http://srilankans.com.au/sri-lankan-...liflower-curry

We have lots of thai basil and boy does it make curries taste sooo good.

I am in the process of making a Garden video journal for my youtube channel so will be showing off our home grown cauliflower lol. Only grew 2 this year but going to grow more for our fall garden in the Macro bins.

So its going to be Cauliflower curry most likely today. Going to take wifey out for mothers day tomorrow.

[beeman]

I have just been looking into grafting Sweet Peppers and found this article where they use Ascorbic acid, or vitamin C to improve the 'take' of grafting both peppers and tomatoes.
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/19743-...icum-annuum-l/
It might be worth a look?
More information which might be helpful.
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/graft-t...ock-28224.html

[z_willus_d]

Originally Posted by Delerium

We love to make curries (partly because my family side is Sri Lankan) & my wife is filipino. We might make something like this today or tomorrow.

http://srilankans.com.au/sri-lankan-...liflower-curry

We have lots of thai basil and boy does it make curries taste sooo good.

That recipe looks great, and I often season the cauliflower with curry and Indian spices, which is usually a hit and miss proposition for me. So there are three items in your recipe that I have no idea where to get or what they are. Any tips would be appreciated:
- Sri lankan roasted curry powder
- Maldives fish
- and coconut milk Salt

I've got a head or two with this recipe's name on them.

Thanks and enjoy tomorrow...I'll be doing the same-
Naysen

[Delerium]

Originally Posted by z_willus_d

That recipe looks great, and I often season the cauliflower with curry and Indian spices, which is usually a hit and miss proposition for me. So there are three items in your recipe that I have no idea where to get or what they are. Any tips would be appreciated:
- Sri lankan roasted curry powder
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Sri-Lankan-Curry-Powder

- Maldives fish
You could probably skip this. It's dried fish

- and coconut milk Salt
Coconut Milk (get a fresh coconut grind it that's how we do it or buy a canned coconut milk not the sweet type)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm-gQgnBfx8

I've got a head or two with this recipe's name on them.

Thanks and enjoy tomorrow...I'll be doing the same-
Naysen

We are going to get in trouble for talking recipes on the grafting thread.

[z_willus_d]

Thanks a lot Delerium. Yeah, I have a way of digressing from point topic. I'll try to do better.

[livinonfaith]

Originally Posted by Delerium

We are going to get in trouble for talking recipes on the grafting thread.

Since I started the thread, I say that unless you tick off the moderators, let the conversation take us where it takes us!

It's all good with me, not that anyone really cares.

[Delerium]

Alright Here is what we did with the Cauliflower we harvested today.

We did a Garden Video Journal harvesting our Cauliflower. My daughter was pouting after we cut the cauliflower heads..


Backyard Garden Video Journal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MamxmcNqzMc

[livinonfaith]

Oh my Gosh! Was that as tasty as it looks?

[Delerium]

Oh yes it was.. Have you had Thai curries before? It was soooooo delicious! Fresh thai basil from the garden. Only missing thing was we did not have any ripe tomatoes to use with this dish but it was still perfect. My wife knows how to make my tummy so happy!

[z_willus_d]

Delerium, that curry dish looks excellent. There's nothing like taking crops from garden to the table, and you've done it in fine fashion with that cauliflower. I'll be giving it a try sometime soon, assuming I can locate the curry leaves. I never know quite what to use for those, as they don't seem to be available at the "Asian markets" around here.
Thanks for sharing.
-naysen

[Mlm1]

That is one delicious looking dish. I love Thai curries but I have only had them at the Thai restaurants. I'll have to go back and review that recipe.
Marla

[Delerium]

Naysen - you can buy the curry leafs at indian stores. I picked up a plant last year and now growing that. It overwintered so its really doing well now.

Marla it might be worth learning to cook curries - those thai restaurants charge good money for red, green & yellow curries. Thai Basil is my favorite.. Ohhh it smells soo good!

[z_willus_d]

Thanks Delerium. That's where I checked before, but only found bay leafs.

Quick report on the plants. I have six ungrafted plants (2 Sungold, 1 BW Red, 1 Green Zebra, and 1 Madame Jardell's Black. Of these, the latter two I have also a grafted version planted. Around a week back I started to notice, beyond the bronzing and yellowing of leaves, which I attribute to mites, also what looked like the signs of fungus. Among the lower branches of the ungrafted BW Red, GZ, Jardell's, and to a lesser extent, the ungrafted Sungold, I note drooping, sagging, wilted/soggy leafs and branches. The branches drop to the ground at a touch. What's interesting is I haven't encountered this yet on any of my grafted vines. That may be telling, or it may be due to the fact that the ungrafted vines are the oldest by at least a week. I sprayed some Daconil on the lower leaves of these plants earlier today, but I'm guessing between the mites and this possible fungal issue, I might have limited success with the ungrafted vines. It's going to be really interesting for me to see this season through and compare the grafted versions of these tomatoes to the ungrafted. I'm also very interested to hear what others encounter.

For the record, yesterday I spread a 5lb box of neem cake atop the garden beds, which is supposed to both feed the plants and protect against bad bugs. I should also record that I'm keeping a tight foliar spray regime. I spray every other day with the following sequence:
- Day1: Neem (100% cold-pressed) + Actinovate + Excel-LG + N + a bit of BIOBIZ BIO-GROW
- Day3: Pyrethren (Take Down from Monterey or similar)
- Day5: Spinosad + BT
- Day7: Monterey Mineral Oil
- Day9: Cedar Oil (GoGnats)
- Then repeat

I might try alternating the BIO-GROW for Seaweed on alternating runs. I'm slightly concerned that with all the spraying, I might clog the stomata of my plants, so I might want to insert a wash cycle day. We'll see. I always spray just before sun-down. So far, I haven't noticed any ill-effects on the bees or lady bugs. I'm open for any suggestions on how to improve my feed/spray rotations. My goal is to stay 100% "organic," though I realize that I've already screwed with that having sprayed the Daconil earlier. I'm not so clear as to why the Daconil is "bad," so I'm using it when I feel I must. I wish the Excel-LG and Actinovate would work as advertised, but they never really seem to get the job done for me. Only other option I see is to do a better job of limiting my vines to only a few leaders, but here in dry sunny CA, I expect I should be able to let them bush out in their cages. That's my expectation at least. Please post your grafting results from the garden as they come in.

--naysen

[b54red]

That is a lot of spraying. I could never spray that often down here because our high humidity can cause leaves to remain wet for far too long. The frequent wetting of the leaves would defeat the purpose of spraying. My biggest foliar problem is with things caused by too much moisture in the air so wetting the leaves too often is just asking for problems. With the low humidity in California you might be able to get away with it with no problems.

Waiting til you need Daconil is a problem because the whole purpose of using it is to not need it. As good as it is and as regular as I use it I still can have problems with foliage diseases especially if we have a good rainy spell which takes it off the leaves. I hate having to spray every week but since I like having a chance of making a decent crop it provides the best protection available. The less problems I have with foliage diseases usually means less problems with pests. A sick plant seems to invite pests. I have noticed that so far this year with the grafted plants giving me some fusarium protection and regular Daconil spraying I am having less of both problems so far. I just hope it will continue but I have no illusions about how bad the fusarium is in my soil so I know eventually it will start taking a toll on my plants.

I'm sure that you can get away with much bushier plants than I can but there are other reasons for keeping the plants to fewer stems. I have found that I get better fruit set with at least some pruning. I base the number of stems on the kind of foliage each variety produces. Some of the hearts have no trouble with up to 6 stems and there are other varieties that also do well with more stems. I have been trying to keep up with how pruning has affected the different varieties for the past few years paying more attention to the number of stems and more often than not the plants kept to from one to three stems actually out produce the ones with more stems. Some of this is due to the better disease prevention I get with more open plants and sometimes it is just that the pruned plants have a heavier fruit set with far less dropped blossoms.

Another good reason for limiting the number of stems is the ease and efficiency of spraying that pruned plants provide. Even with an excellent sprayer that provides a very strong mist I find it very difficult to get really good coverage on a very bushy dense plant.

If you are growing multiple plants of the same variety why not try different numbers of stems on a few and compare the results. It has taken me quite a few years of trial and error to find out which varieties do better with what kind of pruning so now I have plants with anywhere from one to eight stems growing during every season.

I will have to say that even with all my failures at the grafting process that I am extremely happy with the results so far with the plants in the garden. By late April I usually have losses of around 30% due to fusarium and bacterial wilt and so far I haven't lost one plant to those constant plagues. I have lost two to TSWV and about half a dozen right after planting to a late frost and I did lose a couple to wind breaking them at the graft.

I am noticing increased vigor of some varieties that I grafted and decreased vigor on some others. The ones with decreased vigor that standout are Moreton, Lucky Cross and Red Barn. For some reason they are actually growing much slower than they usually do when not grafted. Many of the others are showing increased growth and fruit set while some show no discernible difference. Overall the plants grafted to my fluke rootstock are showing the greatest increase in vigor compared to the ones grafted to the fusarium resistant hybrids. I will just have to wait and see how resistant the fluke rootstock actually is as the season progresses. I have not put any of the grafts onto Multifort or Amelia rootstock into the garden yet due to my poor grafting with them. I have a few that will be going into the ground in the next week or so and I will be attempting more grafts this week.

Bill

[z_willus_d]

Bill, thanks for the report and for posting your graft vs. ungraft results. Let's keep a close eye on this rough "experiment" as it progresses through the season.

I never start a season wanting to spray Daconil, as I'm forbid to do so to an extent by she who will not be named -- and probably for good general reasons. The hope every year is that my organics (Actinovate, Excel-LG [systemic], Biota-Max, MycoGrow dunks, technique [grafting, spacing, etc.], etc.] will somehow see me through w/out the need. That hope is always dashed in the end, but if I give up and start spraying stuff like Daconil from the get-go, I'm not sure I would continue to invest in tomato gardening. There has to be a way to do this 100% organic w/out loosing plants. So I'll be stuck in this quixotic quest for perfection in the garden, probably for the rest of my life...or until I move on to something else, like wine-making.

What I'm hoping I'll find here pretty soon is that none of the grafted plants show signs of fungus/wilt, and that my spray regime keeps the mites in check. If that proves out, then I'll go 100% grafted next year and eliminate the daconil spray, which as you stated, at this point is less than ideal for helping the effected plants. I still think it can help stave off the spread, if not to the upper leaves of the affected plant, at least to adjacent vines.

I'm looking forward to some more pictures streaming in from the community of grafters...particularly of A-B comparisons in as close to approximate conditions as possible.
-naysen