Best grafted tomato varieties? - Page 51

Delerium · August 7, 2013

Beeman, I've seen this blog before and its nicely explained for new grafters. I won't be going this route though. I know i am going to have a lot of fun grafting for next year. I am already deciding which multiple varieties i want to graft on to my root stock selections. It's going to be pretty cool to have 3 varieties on one plant with multiple color tomatoes. Black, Pink & Yellow or tomatoes with different shapes on the same plant.. Ohhh its going to be Sweet!

aclum · August 7, 2013

Hi Delerium,

I hadn't heard of the National Seed Expo so I looked it up. It sounds great (if you have the energy), but I think it would be too much of a "zoo" for me and I wouldn't be up to all that stuff physically. But, if I could manage it, I'd definitely plan to go!

Not sure about the rootstock F2 thing, but it would probably be worth a try. I've never saved seeds before, but I am saving seeds to grow out of a couple of mystery tomatoes I grew this year. I do like the idea of overwintering some of the rootstock plants and might try that myself with the RST 04-105-T.

Beeman,

Very interesting link you posted. I hadn't seen it before. I just sort of skimmed the part about the healing chamber and will have to go back and check things out in more detail later. Interesting comments about the darkness after grafting

. I'll see how things go with room lighting for now and may later decide to go back to the darkness thing....

Doug,

Thanks for the comments about the nebulizer's oxygen output not enough to worry about. (I don't know why the term "nebulizer" escaped my mind and I kept referring to to a "respirator" - but "nebulizer was what I meant).

I had been thinking about hooking the nebulizer reservoir tubing directly to a medical oxygen tank because that gave off a nice strong mist when set to about 4 lpm (I have an oxygen concentrator and refillable tanks). But I decided to just use the nebulizer instead and it does seem to create enough mist.

I'm attaching a couple of photos I took of my most recent graft (done a couple of hours ago) in the healing chamber with the "mister set--up." The photos aren't very good but I'm hoping you might be able to see the mist coming out of the reservoir mouthpiece (it can be clearly seen with the naked eye).

Sort of the wrong angle to see everything clearly, but the graft is a grandeur with a leaf and partial stem left on to possibly grow into another granderur, a Lucky Cross "tube-type" graft, and a Goose Creek cleft graft.

Some of the grafts I had been doing were too tall for the regular seed trays with the tall humidity dome, so I fashioned a new healing chamber using two old refrigerator trays (that I had been using to hold seedlings). I've got foam weatherstripping in places to close the air gaps, and there are sliding mechanisms on both trays to let varying amounts of air in. I have tape over any tiny gaps at this stage, will remove the tape in a couple of days.

I wonder if an aquarium pump would work with the nebulizer reservoir. I think you can get the resevoirs for a couple of dollars and the aquarium pumps can be pretty inexpensive.

Anne

aclum · August 7, 2013

OOPS! Forgot to attach the photos!

Anne

aclum · August 7, 2013

Sheesh! Second OOPS of the day already!!

The comments re: the use of the nebulizer should have been posted to this thread on CO2 and oxygen:

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=29584

I referred those guys back over here

!

(I think maybe I need a nap

).

Anne

livinonfaith · August 8, 2013

Anne, I'm using the RST-04-105-T seed this year. The article you linked is one of the main reasons that I chose it. It seemed to be one of the best for my area.

I really goofed up with mine, though. I grafted them in DE in four inch pots with the intention of fertilizing and potting them up right after they healed. Unfortunately, I dropped the ball and the plants became really stunted, thin, lanky and weak. That was mistake number one.

Mistake number two was putting them in the grass outside my greenhouse to harden and then just leaving them there for weeks while it rained nonstop as I tried to get enough potting soil mixed for fifty new containers.

Doing that directly exposed the top part of the grafted plants to all of the diseases in the grass that grew up around them, (and there was a ton of disease this year with all of this rain!) so they had some yellow leaves on the scion part, even before I planted them.

I'll continue this later as I have to actually go live in the real world for a brief bit of time!

Delerium · August 8, 2013

Beeman have you looked in to Beaufort F1? It has tolerance to Corky Root. I posted a picture (first one) on post #744 which uses Beaufort F1 (seeds from Marla) as the root stock with 2 tomato varieties. Beaufort has been my favorite so far and imo its the best compared to Maxifort and Multifort. I am not impressed with Maxifort & Multifort. So far the graft done with beaufort is a pretty impressive looking plant with very thick stems (for this time of year) and the flowers the cluster/truss is pretty huge almost as thick as the stem of the plant. It also healed the fastest - around 9 days

http://www.tomatoville.com/showpost....&postcount=744

livinonfaith · August 8, 2013

To continue from the post above, I figured all my grafting efforts this year had been wasted due to my own incompetence. The plants really looked awful when I put them in their containers. I didn't even plant a couple of the grafted ones because they looked so bad that I didn't want to waste the space on them.

Now, months later, they are the largest plants and have the most tomatoes. They have NOT been disease free. However, unlike many of the nongrafted plants that dwarfed them and out produced them at the beginning, they are still hanging in there, and still setting tomatoes.

At this point I've lost several of the nongrafted plants and several more are going down fast. But I have hope that the grafted plants will hang in long enough to ripen most of their fruit. They certainly look more stable than the others and since we have had some drier weather, they have new growth that looks surprisingly good.

One thing that I am upset at myself about is that I was recording all of the weights of the tomatoes as I pulled them until about two weeks ago, when I had a bunch of them ripen at the same time that I was trying to get ready for vacation. Then I kind of gave up since I had so many to pick when I got back from vacation. It was too hard to keep them separate. So I don't have the records that I had planned to keep to compare them.

Paige

beeman · August 8, 2013

Quote:

Originally Posted by Delerium

Beeman have you looked in to Beaufort F1? It has tolerance to Corky Root. I posted a picture (first one) on post #744 which uses Beaufort F1 (seeds from Marla) as the root stock with 2 tomato varieties. Beaufort has been my favorite so far and imo its the best compared to Maxifort and Multifort. I am not impressed with Maxifort & Multifort. So far the graft done with beaufort is a pretty impressive looking plant with very thick stems (for this time of year) and the flowers the cluster/truss is pretty huge almost as thick as the stem of the plant. It also healed the fastest - around 9 days
http://www.tomatoville.com/showpost....&postcount=744

I did try Multifort, failed to get a take, but found out later lots of errors on my part.
I am aware of Beaufort, in fact i placed an order just yesterday with Paramount Seeds, as they deal with 'foreigners' from Canada.
It's too late to do anything this year, but getting my ducks in a row for next.
Just out of interest. I used Biotamax this year, no Corky Root Rot. Even the other stuff, strawberries, melons, cucumbers all growing well this year, whereas last year was a disaster.

loulac · August 11, 2013

Grafting experts are plentiful here so I hopefully ask a question :
Has anybody tried to fight blossom end rot (BER) by choosing precise rootstocks ? The disease is not listed in http://agsyst.wsu.edu/usda-scri-etal...b2013-mk-1.pdf .It doesn’t mean no one has an idea. French tomato growers had a rotten spring and are wondering if there might be a solution to their problems in grafting.
All answers will be appreciated and the positive ones –if any! – will be posted on tomodori , a little brother of Tomatoville.

aclum · September 12, 2013

Hi,

Wasn't quite sure where to post some new photos and discussion of my new nebulizer equipped healing chamber plus a couple new grafts, so went ahead
and posted in the photo section.

For anyone interested, here's the link:

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=30041

Anne

clkeiper · September 13, 2013

I can say of the 5 that I was successful with I see no difference in their growth or fruit to justify me doing this again. I thought this was a wonderful "tool" to be able to put in my "tool box", but I don't think I will do it again.

beeman · September 13, 2013

Quote:

Originally Posted by clkeiper

I can say of the 5 that I was successful with I see no difference in their growth or fruit to justify me doing this again. I thought this was a wonderful "tool" to be able to put in my "tool box", but I don't think I will do it again.

You might change your mind if your crop is a total failure due to Fusarium or Corky root rot, or a miriad of other diseases.

clkeiper · September 13, 2013

Quote:

Originally Posted by beeman

You might change your mind if your crop is a total failure due to Fusarium or Corky root rot, or a miriad of other diseases.

Yep, I agree completely, but evidently these aren't an issue for me here. the blight is the worst or other fungal diseases that affect the foliage. I am not implying it isn't worth the effort to do this for everyone else, for me it wasn't worth it. Mine look no better than all the ungrafted varieties I grew this year.

Delerium · September 13, 2013

Grafting has some seriously huge advantages! Everyone seems to focus on plants immunity. Did any of you consider the benefits it provides for those with little space where one can grow more varieties on a single plant which doesn't sacrifice resources like space. If you could graft say 2-3 varieties on a plant someone who could only grow 10 plants could grow 30 varieties. To me that's almost a dream come true for someone who loves to grow whatever varieties i can get my hands on!

Besides that i have to disagree on the fact that they provide no advantages as far as yield go. I noticed that different root stocks changes the properties of the size of the fruit, I noticed little to no cracking on fruits that usually do crack normally and longevity of plants lasting longer after getting hit by disease. My next plan is to try to graft Peppers on to tomato root stock and see if i can get peppers and tomatoes to grow on the same plant. Eggplants are not that much of a issue as they seem to do fine on there own but might graft on to Black Beauty.

aclum · September 14, 2013

Hi,

As I've noted elsewhere, I've become especially interested in the healing chamber portion of grafting. I've become fan of Cary Rivard (referenced one of his videos either here or in my healing chamber thread in the photo section), and just "discovered" this new video of his on using the healing chamber. It's excellent IMHO!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mxy0HfgpKY

This particular video was done a little over two months ago, and I noticed that he has other new videos I want to check out.

There's quite a bit of new info in the video linked above that I haven't seen in other videos or really read about in such detail.

Enjoy!
Anne

PS - If you're not grafting now, this may get you in the mood for the upcoming season

August 7, 2013	#754
aclum Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Merced, CA Posts: 832	Sheesh! Second OOPS of the day already!! The comments re: the use of the nebulizer should have been posted to this thread on CO2 and oxygen: http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=29584 I referred those guys back over here ! (I think maybe I need a nap). Anne

August 11, 2013	#759
loulac Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2013 Location: France Posts: 554	Can grafting fight BER ? Grafting experts are plentiful here so I hopefully ask a question : Has anybody tried to fight blossom end rot (BER) by choosing precise rootstocks ? The disease is not listed in http://agsyst.wsu.edu/usda-scri-etal...b2013-mk-1.pdf .It doesn’t mean no one has an idea. French tomato growers had a rotten spring and are wondering if there might be a solution to their problems in grafting. All answers will be appreciated and the positive ones –if any! – will be posted on tomodori , a little brother of Tomatoville.

September 13, 2013	#761
clkeiper Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: ohio Posts: 4,350	I can say of the 5 that I was successful with I see no difference in their growth or fruit to justify me doing this again. I thought this was a wonderful "tool" to be able to put in my "tool box", but I don't think I will do it again. __________________ carolyn k

August 7, 2013	#751
Delerium Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: California Posts: 942	Beeman, I've seen this blog before and its nicely explained for new grafters. I won't be going this route though. I know i am going to have a lot of fun grafting for next year. I am already deciding which multiple varieties i want to graft on to my root stock selections. It's going to be pretty cool to have 3 varieties on one plant with multiple color tomatoes. Black, Pink & Yellow or tomatoes with different shapes on the same plant.. Ohhh its going to be Sweet!

August 7, 2013	#752
aclum Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Merced, CA Posts: 832	Hi Delerium, I hadn't heard of the National Seed Expo so I looked it up. It sounds great (if you have the energy), but I think it would be too much of a "zoo" for me and I wouldn't be up to all that stuff physically. But, if I could manage it, I'd definitely plan to go! Not sure about the rootstock F2 thing, but it would probably be worth a try. I've never saved seeds before, but I am saving seeds to grow out of a couple of mystery tomatoes I grew this year. I do like the idea of overwintering some of the rootstock plants and might try that myself with the RST 04-105-T. Beeman, Very interesting link you posted. I hadn't seen it before. I just sort of skimmed the part about the healing chamber and will have to go back and check things out in more detail later. Interesting comments about the darkness after grafting . I'll see how things go with room lighting for now and may later decide to go back to the darkness thing.... Doug, Thanks for the comments about the nebulizer's oxygen output not enough to worry about. (I don't know why the term "nebulizer" escaped my mind and I kept referring to to a "respirator" - but "nebulizer was what I meant). I had been thinking about hooking the nebulizer reservoir tubing directly to a medical oxygen tank because that gave off a nice strong mist when set to about 4 lpm (I have an oxygen concentrator and refillable tanks). But I decided to just use the nebulizer instead and it does seem to create enough mist. I'm attaching a couple of photos I took of my most recent graft (done a couple of hours ago) in the healing chamber with the "mister set--up." The photos aren't very good but I'm hoping you might be able to see the mist coming out of the reservoir mouthpiece (it can be clearly seen with the naked eye). Sort of the wrong angle to see everything clearly, but the graft is a grandeur with a leaf and partial stem left on to possibly grow into another granderur, a Lucky Cross "tube-type" graft, and a Goose Creek cleft graft. Some of the grafts I had been doing were too tall for the regular seed trays with the tall humidity dome, so I fashioned a new healing chamber using two old refrigerator trays (that I had been using to hold seedlings). I've got foam weatherstripping in places to close the air gaps, and there are sliding mechanisms on both trays to let varying amounts of air in. I have tape over any tiny gaps at this stage, will remove the tape in a couple of days. I wonder if an aquarium pump would work with the nebulizer reservoir. I think you can get the resevoirs for a couple of dollars and the aquarium pumps can be pretty inexpensive. Anne

August 8, 2013	#755
livinonfaith Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina Posts: 1,332	Anne, I'm using the RST-04-105-T seed this year. The article you linked is one of the main reasons that I chose it. It seemed to be one of the best for my area. I really goofed up with mine, though. I grafted them in DE in four inch pots with the intention of fertilizing and potting them up right after they healed. Unfortunately, I dropped the ball and the plants became really stunted, thin, lanky and weak. That was mistake number one. Mistake number two was putting them in the grass outside my greenhouse to harden and then just leaving them there for weeks while it rained nonstop as I tried to get enough potting soil mixed for fifty new containers. Doing that directly exposed the top part of the grafted plants to all of the diseases in the grass that grew up around them, (and there was a ton of disease this year with all of this rain!) so they had some yellow leaves on the scion part, even before I planted them. I'll continue this later as I have to actually go live in the real world for a brief bit of time!

August 8, 2013	#756
Delerium Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: California Posts: 942	Beeman have you looked in to Beaufort F1? It has tolerance to Corky Root. I posted a picture (first one) on post #744 which uses Beaufort F1 (seeds from Marla) as the root stock with 2 tomato varieties. Beaufort has been my favorite so far and imo its the best compared to Maxifort and Multifort. I am not impressed with Maxifort & Multifort. So far the graft done with beaufort is a pretty impressive looking plant with very thick stems (for this time of year) and the flowers the cluster/truss is pretty huge almost as thick as the stem of the plant. It also healed the fastest - around 9 days http://www.tomatoville.com/showpost....&postcount=744

August 8, 2013	#757
livinonfaith Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina Posts: 1,332	To continue from the post above, I figured all my grafting efforts this year had been wasted due to my own incompetence. The plants really looked awful when I put them in their containers. I didn't even plant a couple of the grafted ones because they looked so bad that I didn't want to waste the space on them. Now, months later, they are the largest plants and have the most tomatoes. They have NOT been disease free. However, unlike many of the nongrafted plants that dwarfed them and out produced them at the beginning, they are still hanging in there, and still setting tomatoes. At this point I've lost several of the nongrafted plants and several more are going down fast. But I have hope that the grafted plants will hang in long enough to ripen most of their fruit. They certainly look more stable than the others and since we have had some drier weather, they have new growth that looks surprisingly good. One thing that I am upset at myself about is that I was recording all of the weights of the tomatoes as I pulled them until about two weeks ago, when I had a bunch of them ripen at the same time that I was trying to get ready for vacation. Then I kind of gave up since I had so many to pick when I got back from vacation. It was too hard to keep them separate. So I don't have the records that I had planned to keep to compare them. Paige

September 12, 2013	#760
aclum Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Merced, CA Posts: 832	Hi, Wasn't quite sure where to post some new photos and discussion of my new nebulizer equipped healing chamber plus a couple new grafts, so went ahead and posted in the photo section. For anyone interested, here's the link: http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=30041 Anne

September 13, 2013	#764
Delerium Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: California Posts: 942	Grafting has some seriously huge advantages! Everyone seems to focus on plants immunity. Did any of you consider the benefits it provides for those with little space where one can grow more varieties on a single plant which doesn't sacrifice resources like space. If you could graft say 2-3 varieties on a plant someone who could only grow 10 plants could grow 30 varieties. To me that's almost a dream come true for someone who loves to grow whatever varieties i can get my hands on! Besides that i have to disagree on the fact that they provide no advantages as far as yield go. I noticed that different root stocks changes the properties of the size of the fruit, I noticed little to no cracking on fruits that usually do crack normally and longevity of plants lasting longer after getting hit by disease. My next plan is to try to graft Peppers on to tomato root stock and see if i can get peppers and tomatoes to grow on the same plant. Eggplants are not that much of a issue as they seem to do fine on there own but might graft on to Black Beauty.

September 14, 2013	#765
aclum Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Merced, CA Posts: 832	Hi, As I've noted elsewhere, I've become especially interested in the healing chamber portion of grafting. I've become fan of Cary Rivard (referenced one of his videos either here or in my healing chamber thread in the photo section), and just "discovered" this new video of his on using the healing chamber. It's excellent IMHO! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mxy0HfgpKY This particular video was done a little over two months ago, and I noticed that he has other new videos I want to check out. There's quite a bit of new info in the video linked above that I haven't seen in other videos or really read about in such detail. Enjoy! Anne PS - If you're not grafting now, this may get you in the mood for the upcoming season