New fusarium wilt experiment

[b54red]

Well I still have some of my March plants still producing tomatoes despite the rain and disease pressure they have been under. I went ahead and pulled up some more of my old plants that were still green but not setting anymore. Guess what? They had nematodes but not terribly bad but certainly enough to hinder production. I haven't seen a lot of nematode damage since I have been growing heirlooms for the most part. Because they usually don't live long enough to get RKN.

No other plants have died from fusarium for months now so I guess grafting is the only viable solution unless I grow nothing but hybrids with strong resistance to fusarium and little flavor. I think I'll opt for the grafting from now on. I have already got my clips for next year and now all I have to do is decide what seeds to use for rootstock.

Bill

[beeman]

Originally Posted by b54red

I think I'll opt for the grafting from now on. I have already got my clips for next year and now all I have to do is decide what seeds to use for rootstock.Bill

It might be nice if you would share your findings. There seems to be a variety, but which for which scions might be nice to discuss.

[b54red]

As I mentioned on one of the grafting forums the two best rootstock have been Floralina and Tasti-Lee so far. They neither one are resistant to nematodes so that is a drawback but nematodes usually take much longer to kill than does fusarium. I am experimenting with Amelia and Multifort but I did not get my seed started for them til late so I didn't put any grafts of them out til June so it is too early to tell how they will do.

As to scions, I am sold on several that did really good grafted onto either scion. The best was probably Virginia Sweet which was grafted onto a Floralina and is still producing. Other scions that produced good on Floralina were Barlow Jap, Tarasenko-6, Brandywine Sudduth, Bella Rosa, and Red Barn. The ones that did the best on Tasti-Lee rootsock were Giant Belgium, Omar's Lebanese, Donskoi, Indian Stripe pl, and Fish Lake Oxheart. I am absolutely amazed at the production of Donskoi on the Tasti-Lee because it is known for being really stingy.

So far on my Amelia rootstock I can say already that Franks Large Red and Lumpy red do very well on it but that Neves Azorean Red and Indian Stripe have done very poorly when grafted to Amelia. Could just be bad grafts but I think the two varieties are not very compatible with Amelia. It is still too early to say on my Multifort grafts and with the awful rainy season we have had fighting foliage diseases has kind of thrown a monkey wrench into determining which plants are doing well since all of them have been drowning for most of the past two months. I was really hoping to be able to determine better which grafts to use next year because I would like the added benefit of Nematode resistance that Amelia and Multifort provide but my success with Floralina and Tasti-Lee on some varieties is just too good not to try again even if they do get nematodes.

Bill

[aclum]

(Inadvertently posted this to Farmer's Daughter Fusarium thread... meant to post it here!)

Hi Bill,

Thanks for posting all that information on which tomatoes did well on which rootstock. Very interesting!

At one point you mentioned that your garden was "drowning," which made me wonder if you'd seen the following article:

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/fletcher/pro...h/grafting.pdf

with info on using eggplant rootstock for hot and wet conditions. I admit to not having read the whole article yet (particularly on the details of the actual grafting), but did skim the part about the eggplant rootstock.

DP seeds carries, I think, 3 different rootstocks specifically for eggplants AND tomatoes. I'm not sure if the rootstock are themselves hybrid (or interspecies??) eggplant or tomato, but will e-mail them to find out. I know NE Seeds distributes some of their tomato and watermelon rootstock, but I don't think they have the eggplant type.

I got some of their RST -04-105-T tomato rootstock (from NE seeds) and was really impressed by it. 100% germination all within a day or two or each other and in about the same time frame as my scion seeds, 7 of my 8 grafts took quickly with no problems (and the one that didn't take had a bad graft connection). Unfortunately I forgot to turn on the AC when I went out for a Dr's apt the other day and I sort of fried the scions on 3 of 4 grafts in one of my healing chambers. When I unclipped them to cut off the scion portion, I saw that the graft had totally taken on the ones that died, and the rootstocks looked good so I tried regrafting with a "petiole" graft ala Delerium.

I posted a few photos of my ping-tung eggplant/kbx tomato graft in the grafting photos thread. I want to try more along these lines but have been looking for an eggplant specifically suited to grafting.

Something to think about ......

Anne

[b54red]

Anne I plan on trying that rootstock on some grafts this next season because it is supposed to be resistant to all 3 races of fusarium and to nematodes if I'm not mistaken.

The situation we have had this summer is probably only a once in a lifetime thing here. It just doesn't rain that much from early summer to fall down here. I have been gardening for about 40 years and the only time I have ever seen rain like this was in the winter or very early spring and it didn't persist like this has. I have raised beds and heavy rain is not usually much of a problem except sometimes between the beds; but this year the rain just has gone on so long it is almost like the plants are just saturated as if they were submerged in a bucket of water. They have forecast some drier weather ahead and I hope some of my plants will recover enough to provide me with some fall tomatoes even if the plants aren't too pretty.

Bill

[cythaenopsis]

Bill, what is your garden square footage or acreage? Has it remained pretty much the same size over the course of your 40 years of gardening?

[b54red]

Originally Posted by cythaenopsis

Bill, what is your garden square footage or acreage? Has it remained pretty much the same size over the course of your 40 years of gardening?

My garden is all raised beds four feet wide. I have one bed that is about 40 ft long, one bed about 35 ft. long, one bed about 30 ft long, two beds about 20 ft long and two that are a little over 10 ft. long. I built these beds about 30 years ago and have grown in them since. I gardened in the spot where the beds are for a few years before building the beds in an effort to control water runoff which would ruin my garden about every other year before I built the beds. The ground has been badly infected with fusarium since I started gardening here along with nematodes.

Bill

[cythaenopsis]

^ As depressing the thought may be, have you considered curtailing gardening for a year and excavating all of the contaminated soil? It really sounds to me like the fusarium is managing to entrench itself so it can flourish year after year... unless there's some other source nearby that you're unaware of.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by cythaenopsis

^ As depressing the thought may be, have you considered curtailing gardening for a year and excavating all of the contaminated soil? It really sounds to me like the fusarium is managing to entrench itself so it can flourish year after year... unless there's some other source nearby that you're unaware of.

I actually did that for a couple of beds one year and it helped for about a year. That is back breaking work which I can no longer do and the grafting is working great for me now. I wish I had known about it years ago when all I was planting were the more tasteless but very fusarium resistant hybrids which I could have used for rootstock instead of eating tomatoes. When I tired of the flavor of those commercial style tomatoes I went with staggered planting of heirlooms so that I had new plants continually coming in to replace the dying ones. Even though very few plants lasted more than three months, with the repeated plantings I was able to keep my family and friends in tomatoes from late spring til late fall most years. I even got a few heirlooms that lasted most of the season and that is how I got one of the rootstock I am using now.

With grafting I get heirloom plants that produce far longer. Even when I used plants with only resistance to two races of fusarium they lasted at least a month longer than the scion would typically last so production was much higher. The more resistant rootstock have given me a good many plants that look like they will last the whole season and we have a very long season.

You have to realize I have been battling fusarium since the beginning of this garden 35 years ago so I have tried just about everything in my efforts to coexist with it. The only thing that has really worked well besides planting some of the more bulletproof hybrids is grafting onto rootstock that are very resistant to fusarium. I think one of the reasons the only tomatoes you see in the grocery stores now are so tasteless is those are the varieties that are resistant to fusarium and nematodes and can be grown successfully in the warmer climates.

Bill

[Delerium]

have you had any experience with using Biotomax with reducing F-Wilt? I posted a thread not to long ago asking about ways to drench the soil and one of the suggestions was trying Biotomax. Do you have any experience or feedback on using Biotomax?

[beeman]

Originally Posted by Delerium

have you had any experience with using Biotomax with reducing F-Wilt? I posted a thread not to long ago asking about ways to drench the soil and one of the suggestions was trying Biotomax. Do you have any experience or feedback on using Biotomax?

Sorry to say, Biotamax has no effect on Fusarium.
I have that problem, regardless of what the 'experts' say regarding frost levels etc. So I decided to try Biotamax this year. I soaked my plant outs in brewed Biotamax and also did a soil drench at 1 month. It prevented my Corky Root Rot, but had no effect on my Fusarium.
Just out of interest, the rest of my garden did benefit, lots of better growth, greener etc. Well worth the time and effort.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Delerium

have you had any experience with using Biotomax with reducing F-Wilt? I posted a thread not to long ago asking about ways to drench the soil and one of the suggestions was trying Biotomax. Do you have any experience or feedback on using Biotomax?

Like I said in my earlier post I have tried nearly everything and that is one of the many I have tried with little or no affect that I could tell. The only thing that worked at all was a soil drench with a bleach solution and it only gave me a week or two of extra time before the fusarium returned. Using it in a large scale would seem foolish to me because of the unknown consequences of all the chemical reactions and the killing of both good and bad life forms in the soil. A very cold winter seems to delay the appearance and severity of fusarium but that is a rare thing down here and out of my control. I also seem to have less severe symptoms during summers with lower than normal rainfall when the plants have to be watered in order for them to survive.

Grafting with a rootstock that is resistant to all three races of fusarium is the only solution that is a viable one for my serious fusarium problems unless I want to be limited to hybrids like Amelia.

Bill

[cythaenopsis]

Thanks for shedding light on your past struggles, Bill. It definitely sounds like you've tried nearly everything. Your garden contracted some kind of super fusarium that persists year after year. Just mind boggling though... I do have to wonder if there's some source up wind from you that is helping it persist.

Anyway, good luck with the grafting and I hope you get a good crop going. I had no idea you could graft plants. But in a similar vein I had an interesting experience just recently. While cleaning the reservoirs of my containers, one of them slipped and I accidentally broke a couple of branches. One of them split fairly cleanly at a stem joint in such a way that I was able to lash it to one of the supports to keep it closed. The branch seems to be holding up. One other branch wasn't responding very well and started to wilt rather dramatically. The three tomatoes on it looked to be doomed. But somehow the plant managed to heal and the leaves sprung back to life. Pretty remarkable. Hearing about the grafting success, I'm now seeing why my damaged plant was able to recover.

[z_willus_d]

Mistaken post. Please ignore.

[b54red]

[QUOTE=cythaenopsis;374128]Thanks for shedding light on your past struggles, Bill. It definitely sounds like you've tried nearly everything. Your garden contracted some kind of super fusarium that persists year after year. Just mind boggling though... I do have to wonder if there's some source up wind from you that is helping it persist.

I don't think the fusarium I have is any super strain I just have plenty of all three races of fusarium wilt and that limits what varieties will grow for any length of time. Fusarium is prevalent in a lot of the soil down here. All the commercial growers around here now use only varieties that are resistant to all three races of fusarium in order to insure a good crop. I can still grow heirlooms and hybrids that are less resistant but the odds of success go way down and the number of productive plants is greatly reduced. Grafting is a lot of trouble and fairly expensive but compared to the alternatives it is the best solution. I love not having to set out such a large number of plants in order to have a decent crop and I really like not having to replace such a large percentage of my plants continually throughout the season.

Bill