Triple Variety Tomato Graft Experiment

[Delerium]

Yes Anne all no roots grafts... And.. this isn't even all of the grafts. I have almost 30 more grafts that i want to add as petiole grafts. So far.. I have yet to lose a graft. All the extras I can't use will probably go to friends and might have a plant sale for fun with Jiana.

[aclum]

That's amazing! I guess I may have to give the no-root grafting another try!

A plant sale with your daughter would be fun! CA has a relatively new law - forget the name but something like the cottage food act - that allows properly licensed folks to sell certain homemade foods out of their home - but alas, no laws yet allowing for the home sale of plants or homegrown produce. I believe you can sell homemade tomato sauce or salsa, but not the raw tomatoes from your garden - weird. I called the county to ask about this and they said a law was in the works to allow for home sales of produce and plants but nothing passed yet. Of course, I guess lots of people sell stuff via craigslist, garage sales, etc. and I don't think they ever really enforce the produce or plant thing.

Anne

[Delerium]

By the way i did stack grafts on Dwarfs only because I don't have room to grow them all. So i have a stack graft that has 4 grafts on top of each other and.. it worked LOL!

[Delerium]

Here is some Grafting Humor! How do you like this Anne.. your stack grafting idea in action.

[Delerium]

Winter Tomatoes

[aclum]

Hi Delerium,

Great looking winter tomatoes! Have you been covering the plants at all during the night?

I like your stacked graft! Looks like you'll have some growth coming out from the intermediate varieties. Will be fun to keep an eye on this one.

Anne

[Delerium]

Originally Posted by aclum

Hi Delerium,

Great looking winter tomatoes! Have you been covering the plants at all during the night?

Anne

Yes Anne kept the plants covered during the nights. Still had plenty of air flow unlike UV plastic that traps humidity and causes so many other problems.

So last year, I decided to try out Agribon and did exceptionally well on nights where we got down to the low 20's. You could probably see the agribon on the back of the tomato bin. I used water bottles thinking it might also help with keeping the temps inside stable and warmer (like a thermal mass).

[Delerium]

Our Grafted Tomatoes plants.

[Ken4230]

I've never done the type of grafting you are doing, but i had good luck with side grafting many years ago. I would think that you could put several tomatoes on one plant by side grafting.
We used Old Buckeye Yellow as the rootstock and any other tomatoes we had available as the "graftees." My grandmother would sell them to her customers for 25-30 cents apiece.

What you are doing is really interesting, i hope that you keep posting about it.

[Delerium]

I was just joking around with a friend but you could grow about 10+ varieties on a plant. If you stacked 4 varieties on top of each other (let it heal first) then added 2 Dwarf or Cherry grafts as Petiole grafts to each stacked graft section you could have (4 stacked +8 petiole grafts) 12 varieties. Petiole grafts are pretty forgiving and heal much quicker. Some crazy ideas to try out when bored of course .

5-6 varieties on a plant is easy to do. I figure this much from multiple grafting.. If there is new varieties i want to try but don't want to dedicate space.. Stack all those new varieties together and see which ones that perform best to bring back for next years garden .

[Delerium]

Took a chance a planted some grafted maters today.

[JamesL]

Kept it up Delierium! (And Anne). I love following this thread.

[Delerium]

We have been trying to learn more about growing oyster mushrooms mainly to improve our soil and because we love eating them just as much as tomatoes. I love the fact that Oysters can eat through Cardboard and Paper waste quicker than in the compost pile. So.. its been our mission lately to grow more and more Oyster mushrooms so we can introduce it back in to our raised beds once the buckets are spent.

[Delerium]

Oyster Mushrooms growing in our raised bed. How cool is that!

[Delerium]

What's just as exciting as Tomato grafting.. Growing Oyster Mushrooms! Most of our tomato grafts are now planted outdoors and now its just waiting for them to produce. Here is one of our Oyster Mushroom buckets starting to flush/fruit. Yeah i know it looks like a pile of poop lol.



Our first little outdoor Oyster harvest



My daughter explaining to me how Mycology is the soils internet. Yeah that is our Elm and Gray Oyster mycelium taking over that section of the soil. More Mushrooms soon (tm)