Post for Photos of Grafted Plants

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Mlm1

Naysen, hopefully these closer ups are helpful. First 2 are healthy. The third , Purple Bumblebee, has yellowing of leaves higher up than it should have. Unfortunately I cut the worst off yesterday but you can still see the lighter leaves. It is progressing slower than I would expect for fusarium, especially since we had the hot spell recently but nevertheless it is progressing and I think it will kill the plant.
Marla

Oops.

Marla, I am seeing the same thing on many of my plants grafted onto rootstock with fusarium resistance to two races of fusarium like Big Beef and Balls Beefsteak. The plants have all lasted far longer than they would have if not grafted onto those rootstock varieties and my total loses so far are minimal but the fusarium is progressing on many of the plants now. The ones I grafted onto Floralina and Tasti-Lee are not showing any significant fusarium symptoms. If they are showing any it is just too hard to tell with all the foliage diseases I am fighting right now. I think for me it is critical to use a rootstock that is resistant to all three races of fusarium to delay the onset as long as possible. The fluke rootstock is showing itself to be a little better than the hybrid varieties with resistance to two races of fusarium but not nearly as good as the ones resistant to all three. It is by far the most vigorous grower of all the rootstock I have tried and I have gotten amazing results with it on some varieties that are very stingy producers so I will use it again for sure.

Some of the grafts onto Amelia and Multifort are just now getting about 3 ft tall so I guess I'll know how resistant they are in a few weeks. Due to my many mishaps in grafting I only set out half the number of plants that I normally do yet this time of the year I still have almost twice as many healthy producing tomato plants. I really like those numbers. Less plants means less work planting, less work spraying and less work tying them up and best of all less pulling them up and replanting.

Bill

[Mlm1]

Bill, that sure is nice you are having good success with the grafts. I hope you have a great bountiful year.
I was in a hurry when I planted the grafted plants (had a family reunion to attend) so I planted one of the grafts too deep and it is the one with early fusarium. The other thing I did (which I am really unhappy about) was pick out the plants i wanted to keep by their scion (didn't pay attention to the rootstock) and gave the rest away. I accidently gave all of the Amelia rootstock grafts away. I ended up with Lots of Multifort and some Maxifort and Beaufort but I just can't believe I gave away all of the Amelia. I'll have to wait for your results to see how they compare.
Marla

[Salsacharley]

Originally Posted by Delerium

Hope you don't mind me posting here Naysen. I just wanted to share that this is one of the plants I am using for my rootstock selections as a control to compare against Maxifort, Multifort & Beaufort. Of course my goals for grafting is mostly to grow more than 2 varieties per plant and increase production (not so much for fighting tomato deceases). I have setup 2 macro bins that will be ready for side by side comparisons but the results of those testings won't be till late fall. I just love how well this plant is setting large fruit in our heat. So will see how these new grafts do for our fall crop.

Dang that is cool!

Charley

[DavidP]

I though I'd update on the progress of my grafted plants. I posted my first set of photos about a month ago now, I think page 1 on this thread. Just took some photos this morning that I thought I'd update on.

I only have three grafted plants on Maxifort and I've been growing Red brandywine and Cherokee purple on that rootstock. The red brandywine I have both pruned to a single stem and grown american style unpruned in a cage.

Photo below has Red brandywine in cages, plant on left with yellow tag is grafted, ungrafted plant adjoining to the left



Cherokee purple on Maxifort, pruned to single styem, plant on left with yellow tag is grafted, plant on left with white tag is ungrafted both same variety



Red Brandywine on Maxifort pruned to single stem, plant on right with yellow tag is grafted, plant on left with white tag is ungrafted



And to put into perspective nearby plant ungrafted that seems to be doing much better (Crimson Carmello)


For the grafted plants I counted the numbers of fruit and height of the vine. I've yet to harvest any ripe fruit from them although I have from other varieties in the garden for about 2-3 weeks.

---------------------------------- Number of fruits ------------ Height of vine

Unpruned

Red Brandywine (grafted) -----------38--------------------------- 5 1/2 ft

Red Brandywine (ungrafted) ---------9---------------------------- 5 ft


Pruned

Red Brandywine (grafted) -----------11 --------------------------- 4ft

Red Brandywine (ungrafted) ---------10 ------------------------ 3 1/2 ft



Cherokee Purple (grafted)----------- 10-------------------------- 3 ft

Cherokee Purple (ungrafted) ---------11 ------------------------ 3 1/2 ft


The grafted caged plant seems to have taken off and now has large numbers of fruit but they are smaller than in the ungrafted plant next to it. I'm slightly surprised that the pruned plants aren't doing better. Probably could use some fertilizer. I generally don't fertilize anything beyond incorporating compost and organic fertilizer at planting time.
I'll be interesting to see how things progress now that summers heat is here, 109 for the next couple of days.

[z_willus_d]

Thanks for the post and data David. Let's see how the figures look in another 3 weeks. Since none of your plants seem to be showing any signs of disease, you may not be getting the best of the purported benefits of grafting, but as you say, that could change as you move into the hell weeks of summer.
-naysen

[livinonfaith]

Here are a couple of photos of my grafted plants.

I'm embarrassed to show them, really. I almost killed them by not potting them up after the grafting process. They sat in their tiny containers forever and looked like they were half dead by the time they went into their final pots.

It took them quite a while to get back on track. Then, I was so scared that they wouldn't ever start flowering that I didn't do any pruning of the suckers. So what you are seeing in these pics is a wall of overgrown tomato plants that desperately need to be tamed. (For scale, the fence in the background is about four feet tall.)

Of course, all of a sudden, they are covered in blooms. So now I have to decide what to cut out and what to keep in order not to lose all of my tomatoey potential! I don't seem to set fruit as well as a lot of you, so it's hard to cut off any of the flowers! Especially now that they are finally setting!

One year in the not so far distant future, I WILL get this right, darn it!

[DavidP]

Originally Posted by z_willus_d

Thanks for the post and data David. Let's see how the figures look in another 3 weeks. Since none of your plants seem to be showing any signs of disease, you may not be getting the best of the purported benefits of grafting, but as you say, that could change as you move into the hell weeks of summer.
-naysen

Hopefully they will hold up we'll see. I'm more interested in how they cope with heat and also nematodes as i think those are the main problems here. I suppose you could think that because they have a much greater leaf area then maybe they won't do so well.

I saw this study which seems to suggest that grafting will help with heat stress
http://www.tropentag.de/2004/abstracts/full/106.pdf

but that was 100F in a German laboratory setting so maybe different than outside here.

Originally sourced from
http://sunrisetomatografting.yuku.co...k#.UdBLPm2DnBc

[rwsacto]

Here are photos from last week before the 100 deg+ heat wave really hit. All the grafted plants are now larger or equal to their ungrafted sisters and setting fruit. The maxifort plants are still highly vegetative and have outgrown everything, but are producing fruit. The plants on celebrity rootstock are about equal to ungrafted. The grafted plants seemed to be more resistant to the yellowing of lower leaves, present on almost all my plants, that I attribute to powdery mildew.*

Only one plant has sent up a rootstock sucker and no adventitious roots have grown from any scions.

The first photo is ungrafted Chinese in front and grafted on maxifort in back. The grafted plant is about 3 times larger in volume and out the top of the cage. Fruitset is about equal but the ungrafted fruit ripened first.

The second photo is Cherokee purple grafted on Celebrity in foreground and ungrafted CP in the background, both in an Earthtainer. Both are about equal, very vegetative and producing late fruit. These plants get reduced sunlight due to their location next to some redwoods.

*A small volunteer, allowed to struggle in the pathway, has not lost ANY leaves to PM!

Happy 4th
Rick

[z_willus_d]

Rick, cool tomatoes, those Chinese. It's kind of hard to see the full girth and height of your plants from the photos, but your description tells a lot. I wonder if the grafted will overtake your non-grafted? And by that I mean more fruit set/ripening and with quality/taste.

I also wonder about the P.M. determination, given you show something similar to what I have and if you've followed my thread, you know it's looking more like Verticillium or Fusarium.

Good luck and happy 4th yourself.
-naysen

[DavidP]

Another update on my grafted plants, the last one was 4 weeks ago a few posts up.

I have only three plants grafted on Maxifort with their corresponding ungrafted compatriots. I have grafted Red Brandywine and Cherokee purple and am growing both single stemmed and also in the case of red brandywine caged american style unpruned.

Cherokee Purple growing single stemmed, grafted plant on the left with yellow label.



Red Brandywine growing single stemmed grafted plant with yellow label on right



Red Brandywine growing caged unpruned, plant with yellow label on left is grafted





Results so far

Unpruned (caged) Red Brandywine

------------------No of fruit-----Average size (gms)------Ave Diam (cm)----------- Total gms

Grafted -------------29-----------------144----------------------6.6-----------------4322

Ungrafted----------6-------------------462---------------------10-------------------2772


Pruned single stem

Grafted
Cherokee purple---9-----------------217----------------------7.7-----------------1954

Ungrafted
Cherokee purple---9------------------138---------------------6.6------------------1247



Grafted
Red Brandywine----8------------------150---------------------7---------------------1202

Ungrafted
Red Brandywine----9------------------171----------------------7--------------------1542


The caged unpruned Red Brandywine seems to be doing much better yield wise than its counterpart but as you can see from the photo below the fruit on the grafted plant are quite a bit smaller but with almost double the yield so far, the larger one below is a 1lb 8 oz.




Heights of vines

Single stemmed
Cherokee Purple grafted -----4.5 ft
Cherokee purple ungrafted----4 ft
Red Brandywine Grafted--------6ft
Red Brandywine ungrafted-----4ft

Caged
Red brandywine grafted--- --8 ft
Red Brandywine ungrafted--6.5 ft

The heights of the vines are somewhat difficult to get now as the caged grafted plant has grown out and over the supports I provided probably at 8 ft now as opposed to 6.5 ft for the ungrafted plant. Lots of as yet unharvested fruit on the grafted plant not quite so many on the ungrafted. I'm guessing a few days at 110 and a week around 100 took there toll on fruit set. Weather nice now though highs in mid high 80's, low 90's so hoping i get some more fruit set. We'll see. Interested to see how others have gotten on with all their grafts, should be getting some fruit in now I'd guess. I'm hoping that my grafted plants survive thru the heat of summer and continue producing past the ungrafted ones, so I don't have to plant so many individual plants and able to maximise my harvest.

[z_willus_d]

David- Great post, analysis and write-up. I think the only concern one might have in drawing conclusions about the yield benefits of grafting is on whether your sample size of n=3 is sufficient, especially given the reversal on the single-stem RBW.

I'm curious how the taste/texture/quality compares between some of those fruits (grafted vs. non). I've heard it said that grafting may affect the flavor of its scion fruit, which seems to defeat the purpose. I'd say you're in a great position to do some side-by-side comparison tastings to put that assertion to the test.

My non-grafted vines are long finished. The grafted vines are many 18' feet long over their 12'+ cages and buckling down over the sides. They are dry and dead up to the last few feet of the cage and the top-growth seems green, but with that heat you described, I never see a viable flower. I'll try to post some pictures of the jungle some time later this week.

Thanks for posting yours.
-naysen

[DavidP]

Originally Posted by z_willus_d

David- Great post, analysis and write-up. I think the only concern one might have in drawing conclusions about the yield benefits of grafting is on whether your sample size of n=3 is sufficient, especially given the reversal on the single-stem RBW.

I'm curious how the taste/texture/quality compares between some of those fruits (grafted vs. non). I've heard it said that grafting may affect the flavor of its scion fruit, which seems to defeat the purpose. I'd say you're in a great position to do some side-by-side comparison tastings to put that assertion to the test.

-naysen

Definitely a work in progress, I did start with a few more plants but the gophers pulled a couple down before i trapped them all, last count 16. Next year I might do it differently, I was sort of interested in how single stemmed vs caged did production wise with and without grafting.

I hadn't thought of doing a taste comparison as I sort of assumed they'd be the same but I can see now there might be a difference. I was sort of surprised by the size difference between the grafted and ungrafted caged plants. I guess it makes sense if you think that a given leaf area can support a certain amount of fruit and that I had larger numbers set in the grafted caged plant.
I just did a taste test by going back and forward between two (grafted ungrafted Red brandywine) with small pieces cut off. Can't say I saw a big difference but I'm not a great taste discriminator anyway, they all taste good to me especially still warm from the vine.

The single stemmed plants don't seem to show too much difference and even the Red Brandywine seems better ungrafted. The actual plants at this stage look better in the grafted versions but whether that will translate to more fruit I don't know, should know i'd guess by my next update in a month's time. Have definitely gone thru the first flush of harvest, I'm interested in how well they keep producing at this point.

I started harvesting the single stemmed plants probably two weeks before the caged unpruned plants.

[z_willus_d]

Good stuff David. Thanks for the comments. I certainly haven't noticed any obvious taste differences on my vines between grafted and non. Your experience with the caged vs. single-vine also matches my experiences. I think you can get more fruit from a single caged (unpruned) tomato vine than a single-vine, pruned. But the fruit will be smaller. I think you have to also consider how much more volumetric space is taken up with the caged plant vs. an "English" trained vine. I think you could get more total fruit output and larger with more densely spaced single or dual vine plants, but that's more work and a lot of upkeep with the pruning.
-naysen

[aclum]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for posting (esp. the stats) - very interesting. Your results are about the same as mine - i.e. "inconclusive" ! I really haven't been able to tell much difference in taste or growth between the grafted and ungrafted plants.

You did inspire me to post some photos including some grafted and ungrafted plants, but I had other things to mention besides grafting so will do a separate post.

Keep us posted - looks like your garden is just getting into the full swing of things!

Anne

[rnewste]

Summer production has been quite good. Marla's grafted plants are doing well.

Couilles de Taureau (Through the rafters):





Almost 2 pounds:



Raybo