Triple Variety Tomato Graft Experiment

[DSEVERANCE]

Swamp coolers are standard procedure for cooling greenhouses. That's what I use, Shade cloth will knock off about 15 degrees too.

[Delerium]

I am no tomato expert and have no understanding of the genetics. But i don't believe in the non compatibility. As far as my observations every combination i have tried has worked. Everything in my garden currently is a different combination. The failed graft i had was partly due to my daughter tickling the plants and the scion was loose and i didn't catch it in time to fix it.

With the weather getting warmer - i will have to try watermelon on pumpkin. I do have an Eggplant Tomato graft to show you but i am going to wait a bit till it starts to develop fruits etc.

I was thinking when summer gets really hot i will be switching my tomato grafts to eggplant rootstock because they handle the heat so much better and i will have to water less. So i will probably start those around June/July to replace any plants that stop producing during the heat.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Delerium

I am no tomato expert and have no understanding of the genetics. But i don't believe in the non compatibility. As far as my observations every combination i have tried has worked. Everything in my garden currently is a different combination. The failed graft i had was partly due to my daughter tickling the plants and the scion was loose and i didn't catch it in time to fix it.

I planted nothing but grafts last year and there definitely are some combinations that don't work as well. The plants either failed to thrive, produced almost no fruit, produced far smaller fruit or just wouldn't graft successfully onto some rootstock. The last could have been my fault but it was certain varieties that seemed to crop up more than others when combined with certain other rootstock. I had more of these issues with the highly vegetative rootstock varieties like Amelia and Multifort and far less with the other varieties I tried.

It could have been just my graft failures but I never got any KBX or Howard's Winsall to graft to any of the rootstock I tried. Although I successfully grafted Stump of the World onto different rootstock they were very spindly plants with small fruit even though they were planted in various spots in the garden. This year I am going to try pairing Stump up with a less vegetative variety and see if it does better. Lumpy Red thrived on a Multifort rootstock more than any other variety even though it is a fairly small plant when paired with Multifort it is a monster with huge fruit production. This year I have more rootstock varieties and will try more of them and see if I have better luck with some of the varieties of scion that failed last year.

Bill

[Delerium]

Basically i am growing my grafts for more selection and high yield. I decided Desease is something your going to get regardless of the root stock. It might last longer but is it that much better? Tomatoes "generally" yield pretty good on its own. I know some varieties are not as productive as others. But here is how i go about it. I always pair the high yielding variety as the root stock and the not so productive variety as the scion. That way its a win win situation if the scion performs poorly i still can get good production from the root stock. But i am hoping with this years trials pairing it with a high yielding variety will yield higher production. That's my bet so will just have to wait and see. The biggest benefit is.. i won't have to eat.. Maxifort or Beaufort tomatoes.. (wink wink). A basic graft will give me 2 varieties with 3 or 4 grafts on plants can give me more variety for my kitchen table

[Delerium]

Originally Posted by b54red

I planted nothing but grafts last year and there definitely are some combinations that don't work as well. The plants either failed to thrive, produced almost no fruit, produced far smaller fruit or just wouldn't graft successfully onto some rootstock. The last could have been my fault but it was certain varieties that seemed to crop up more than others when combined with certain other rootstock. I had more of these issues with the highly vegetative rootstock varieties like Amelia and Multifort and far less with the other varieties I tried.

It could have been just my graft failures but I never got any KBX or Howard's Winsall to graft to any of the rootstock I tried. Although I successfully grafted Stump of the World onto different rootstock they were very spindly plants with small fruit even though they were planted in various spots in the garden. This year I am going to try pairing Stump up with a less vegetative variety and see if it does better. Lumpy Red thrived on a Multifort rootstock more than any other variety even though it is a fairly small plant when paired with Multifort it is a monster with huge fruit production. This year I have more rootstock varieties and will try more of them and see if I have better luck with some of the varieties of scion that failed last year.

Bill

Bill i successfully grafted KB on to Gary O Sena.. I love Gary O' Sena and Love KB. I figure when the time is right i could probably cross pollinate those two as well.

[efisakov]

Have you tried Carbon? It survived longer than any variety in my garden (4 years in a row) and is tasty and productive for me. The plant is big and could serve as a rootstock.

[Delerium]

Originally Posted by efisakov

Have you tried Carbon? It survived longer than any variety in my garden (4 years in a row) and is tasty and productive for me. The plant is big and could serve as a rootstock.

yes i have Carbon grafted as well (pretty much all the fav black tomatoes (Spudakee, IS, CP, JD Special, DDR). My winter garden pretty much was my testing ground to see which varieties performed the best under lots of stress for our area. Since we can go from Cold to Hot and Hot to cold on the same day. When i did my grafts i would take the 2 plants i wanted to graft and use the discarded portions of those plants to do a reverse graft so i could compare which one was better suited for the garden. You never know the inverse graft might actually work better. It's fun selection grafts for the garden with all the different combinations.

This year i want to have fun with crossing tomatoes. Watched the double helix farms video on how to cross and glanced over some tomato books.

[DSEVERANCE]

Originally Posted by Delerium

yes i have Carbon grafted as well (pretty much all the fav black tomatoes (Spudakee, IS, CP, JD Special, DDR). My winter garden pretty much was my testing ground to see which varieties performed the best under lots of stress for our area. Since we can go from Cold to Hot and Hot to cold on the same day. When i did my grafts i would take the 2 plants i wanted to graft and use the discarded portions of those plants to do a reverse graft so i could compare which one was better suited for the garden. You never know the inverse graft might actually work better. It's fun selection grafts for the garden with all the different combinations.

This year i want to have fun with crossing tomatoes. Watched the double helix farms video on how to cross and glanced over some tomato books.

I hope you don't mind if I tell a story. When you have worked for 25 years at Washington State you are inducted into the quarter century club. Several years ago when I was inducted they were also inducting the half century clubbers. One little old man was invited to the podium was introduced as Dr. Darrell Beinz a retired plant breeder. I learned he had hybridized many tomato varieties over the years including Cougar Red and Washington Cherry which is still offered by Johnny's seeds. After the ceremonies I introduced myself and had quite a conversation since I had grown both varieties was was a passionate tomato grower. I asked him if he knew the famous (at least to tomato growers) Dr James Baggett of Oregon State whose hybrids include the Oregon Giant Pea, Honeyboat' delicata winter squash, Gold Nugget' tomato, Oregon Spring' tomato, Siletz' tomato, Early Cascade and many more. He said yes they had been friends for years and in fact Baggett was one of his students when he was teaching Hort at University of Idaho. Later I received all the seeds of several of his breeds of tomatoes since they were closing the program. Apparently they don't use plant breeders like these guys anymore and almost completely rely on geneticists. I sent most of them on to Seed Savers. Long story short, apparently the agriculture Universities have almost completely abandoned vegetable breeding and left it to folks like Delerium and others on this forum who do it because they love it not because they can make a killing. Probably in the long run a good move. BTW he told me Cougar Red took 14 years to stabilize and the geneticists can do the same thing in 3 years. How old are you Delerium?

[Delerium]

Oh turning 40 in a few more years. And your totally right. I just enjoy all the fun and tinkering tomatoes brings to the garden. Grafting, Breeding, Multi cropping.. I tried pepper grafting (which i have done a few successfully but its just not as fun). This year all the neighbors are getting free multi variety grafted plants and they don't even know it. Figure it will be fun surprise to hear the reaction once they get a few different type of tomatoes on the same plant. It's going to be a great year and photo's to follow

[Delerium]

This is old photo from mid last year that i never uploaded here. when i was playing around with the no humidity domes. Basically i spliced the 2 plants from the midsection and put a wire around the stem. Dunked it in DE and allowed it to heal with no humidity dome since its basically a cutting with 2 tomato varieties. The reason for doing this was i was able to allow both plants to heal at the same time / cut the roots off and attach it to a new root stock to add more varieties.
What i was curious about is.. Hybrid Root Systems where if I allowed it to grow as is.. would both properties of both varieties share the same properties? Say if one had disease tolerance? I don't know the answer to it. But if we follow the traditional way to graft where you don't allow the scion to root as you will lose those disease resistant qualities from the root stock. But in a situation where that doesn't matter this would be the easiest way to graft 2 or 3 varieties.

[DSEVERANCE]

Originally Posted by Delerium

This is old photo from mid last year that i never uploaded here. when i was playing around with the no humidity domes. Basically i spliced the 2 plants from the midsection and put a wire around the stem. Dunked it in DE and allowed it to heal with no humidity dome since its basically a cutting with 2 tomato varieties. The reason for doing this was i was able to allow both plants to heal at the same time / cut the roots off and attach it to a new root stock to add more varieties.
What i was curious about is.. Hybrid Root Systems where if I allowed it to grow as is.. would both properties of both varieties share the same properties? Say if one had disease tolerance? I don't know the answer to it. But if we follow the traditional way to graft where you don't allow the scion to root as you will lose those disease resistant qualities from the root stock. But in a situation where that doesn't matter this would be the easiest way to graft 2 or 3 varieties.

Thanks for the tip on DE. I immediately went out to the greenhouse and replaced all my succulent cuttings that were in vermiculite and doing poorly. I replaced with NAPA DE. I going to AutoZone in the morning and get the recommended Absorb. On several of the plants that had established roots I potted up with half cactus mix and half DE. I think part of my problem was the temp. I was keeping the greenhouse around 60 so "gulp" I moved it up to 70.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are doing with the above plant. I will read it again. So far its over my head.

[Delerium]

The graft union was done vertically instead of horizontally - this allows both varieties to have a water source and will heal like a regular cutting in water. This is what inspired me to get away from Humidity domes in the first place. Gave me a easy way to multi graft allowing me to create V shape vines - then if i wanted to replace the root stock i can. What i was asking was? Since this type of graft is sharing the root system of both plants how does it affect the properties of the variety that may have disease resistance? Does it cancel out with the weaker variety?

[DSEVERANCE]

Originally Posted by Delerium

The graft union was done vertically instead of horizontally - this allows both varieties to have a water source and will heal like a regular cutting in water. This is what inspired me to get away from Humidity domes in the first place. Gave me a easy way to multi graft allowing me to create V shape vines - then if i wanted to replace the root stock i can. What i was asking was? Since this type of graft is sharing the root system of both plants how does it affect the properties of the variety that may have disease resistance? Does it cancel out with the weaker variety?

I'm still not following what you are doing. I'll need a drawing I guess. But I can say this. The disease resistance is a property of the intraspecific hybrid (hybrids between tomato and a wild relative) we call the rootstock. If any of the scions have roots in the ground you lose that advantage. As long as the root system is comprised wholly of the rootstock then it seems to me the entire plant has the disease resistance of the rootstock. But I'm sure you understand that. I'm just trying to respond.

[JamesL]

Originally Posted by Delerium

The graft union was done vertically instead of horizontally - this allows both varieties to have a water source and will heal like a regular cutting in water. This is what inspired me to get away from Humidity domes in the first place. Gave me a easy way to multi graft allowing me to create V shape vines - then if i wanted to replace the root stock i can. What i was asking was? Since this type of graft is sharing the root system of both plants how does it affect the properties of the variety that may have disease resistance? Does it cancel out with the weaker variety?

Vertical graft, pretty wild!
If the non resistant plant is rooting you will lose the resistance, not completely of course but a little might be enough to do the damage. If you aren't doing it for disease, than no worries.
I buried most of my graft unions last year and intend to do the same this year. More roots being better than less, no?

[Delerium]

Originally Posted by JamesL

Vertical graft, pretty wild!
If the non resistant plant is rooting you will lose the resistance, not completely of course but a little might be enough to do the damage. If you aren't doing it for disease, than no worries.
I buried most of my graft unions last year and intend to do the same this year. More roots being better than less, no?

James here is another example of Vertical grafting (3 varieties). These were some of the plants that grew during my winter garden earlier this year and produced tomatoes just fine. Dana Dusky Rose, Kelloggs Breakfast and Hoy. This is what led me to believe that there is no incompatibility with tomato grafts taking. I did so many different grafts like this and they all survived and produced tomatoes.

My Eggplant / Tomatoes were done the same way.