2017 Grafting thread: Open to all

[Cole_Robbie]

Thanks for all the equipment tips.

Has anyone seen grafted tomato plants for sale locally? And if so, what was the price?

What makes a graft fail? Is it a bacterial/fungal infection of the wound? I keep thinking that peroxide has a place in this activity.

[Father'sDaughter]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Thanks for all the equipment tips.

Has anyone seen grafted tomato plants for sale locally? And if so, what was the price?

What makes a graft fail? Is it a bacterial/fungal infection of the wound? I keep thinking that peroxide has a place in this activity.

I haven't seen any locally, but Territorial has mail order grafted plants for about $7 each plus shipping.

You would probably need to do a lot of education around the benefits of grafted plants in order to sell them. Almost everyone I've told about my tomato grafting this year has absolutely no clue what I'm talking about, or why I'm "going to all that trouble..."

[Cole_Robbie]

There are some great pics at the bottom of grafting on a large scale.

http://www.oired.vt.edu/ipmil/wp-con...2014-compr.pdf

[Cole_Robbie]

Has anyone tried Supernatural root stock?

http://www.territorialseed.com/produ...ll_tomato_seed

[McGee'sX-Roads]

Sorry if this has been touched on earlier, but I hope someone can help me out.

I grow tomatoes in the greenhouse using coconut coir grow bags. I have never used grafted plants, although another grower in my area says that is all he uses. However when we have compared yield numbers I don't see the difference. What's the advantage of grafted plants in a greenhouse environment when you are growing out hybrids?

I can see if I was trying to take the plants 9 or 10 months out, perhaps they wouldn't lose vigor and would resist potential diseases more. However disease has never been an issue as they are grown in coir and the roots never can grow down into the actual dirt as I have them raised above the ground and have plastic underneath to prevent anything like that from happening.

I run my plants for more like 7 months from the time of transplanting, topping them after 6 months generally. I see the selling points as being more vigorous, higher yields, more disease resistance. I just don't understand how they can produce higher yields. If your non grafted plant is setting fruit on each cluster, you are pruning them down to 3 or 4 fruit per cluster and all are sizing up to marketable fruit, how does a grafted plant yield more? Is the plant so strong you can prune the cluster to more like 4-5 and still get adequate size? Where does the extra yield come from if you aren't losing any to disease issues?

[Father'sDaughter]

In all my research on grafting, I don't recall ever seeing anything about using hybrids as the scions, just as rootstock.

Are you sure the other person is also growing only hybrids?

[Cole_Robbie]

What are the odds that we could de-hybridize a root stock variety into OP form? I am going to get sick of paying 50 cents a seed.

[Father'sDaughter]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

What are the odds that we could de-hybridize a root stock variety into OP form? I am going to get sick of paying 50 cents a seed.

A bit cheaper here if this one covers your resistance needs - http://www.neseed.com/mobile/Product.aspx?id=1413

It doesn't cover verticulum, which I suspect I have in addition to fusarium, but I'm using it for a few plants to see what happens. The other rootstock I went with is DRO141TX from Johnny's which is a bit more per seed, but does cover verticulum wilt.

As for de-hybridizing, I'm guessing you would start loosing various resistant traits as you worked your way back.

[McGee'sX-Roads]

Yes, definitely was hybrid scion on top of hybrid root stock, something like a Rebelski on a Maxifort for instance.

If you visit Johnny's Seeds you can find hybrids grafted, they have Big Dena, Geronimo, Rebelski and a couple of others all available as grafted plants. I know most of the HUGE growers use grafted plants, but these growers are growing out plants for 11 months or so, I can understand the benefit of increased vigor for that length of a growing season, just not sure it benefits a smaller greenhouse grower who has a season more like 6 or 7 months in total.

[BigVanVader]

If you have no issues why bother? Sounds like overkill to me.

[b54red]

I grafted some Bella Rosa's onto RST-04-106 root stock for a friend of mine who does some marketing of his tomatoes. I kept a couple and planted them to see how they perform. I had to quit growing Bella Rosa a few years back because they didn't have resistance to that third race of fusarium that started showing up around here about 7 or 8 years ago. These are the only two determinate tomatoes in my garden and I am really looking forward to how they react to being grafted.

Bill

[Cole_Robbie]

I just ordered grafting clips from hydro gardens and the RST root stock from Harris. They had 100 seeds for $30, but of course jack up the shipping charge to compensate for the lower price. They charged me $12 to ship a priority mail envelope.

[rick9748]

Grafting last knight and was trying to exactly align graft cuts.Had overhead light but was having trouble on some alignment.Out of frustration grabbed a flashlight for back lighting allowed 100% clarity on aligning graft cuts.No light passing through graft cut 100% alignment.Forget the flash light get any light you can place on your table.I had a hand held lantern I could place on grafting table behind grafting station and could see grafts exactly line up.
Like I said all of you may already be use something like this but for me it was a perfect solution to my problem.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by rick9748

Grafting last knight and was trying to exactly align graft cuts.Had overhead light but was having trouble on some alignment.Out of frustration grabbed a flashlight for back lighting allowed 100% clarity on aligning graft cuts.No light passing through graft cut 100% alignment.Forget the flash light get any light you can place on your table.I had a hand held lantern I could place on grafting table behind grafting station and could see grafts exactly line up.
Like I said all of you may already be use something like this but for me it was a perfect solution to my problem.

I have a clip on light that has a 100 watt halogen bulb that sits about half a foot above my head and directed down onto my small cutting board that I make the cuts on. I just hold up my grafts to this light and can see the slightest irregularity or gap. I do recommend spending the extra money for the halogen bulb since it is so much cooler and uses very little juice. Of course on a bright sunny day there is no need for the light but I frequently do most of my grafting latter in the day or at night.

Sometimes I am amazed at some of the poor choices in stems that I have had success with. I have had lots of very much smaller stems graft perfectly to much fatter stems. They sometimes look really funny when they get older. Frequently you just can't find anything close to a match in shape and sometimes in size but it will surprise you how many of those mismatches will succeed as long as the cut angles match and they are held firmly together with the clip. Of course a much higher rate of failure will happen with these types but it is nice to know that most will probably succeed. Perfect matches are always the easiest to graft but seldom do most of my attempts involve perfect matches.


Bill
Bill

[AlittleSalt]

Originally Posted by b54red

Salt I can't tell much from that picture. Usually you get some yellowing on one stem low down and moving up fairly steadily as the first sign of fusarium. Sometimes just removing that stem will delay the worst for quite a while. If you have a healthy looking green plant wilting in the mid day heat it could be several things like poor root development from too much watering the first few weeks after setting it out, damaged roots, damage to the main stem, too little water, nematodes, and worst of all Bacterial Wilt.

If you can post a few pictures of the whole plants from top to bottom or at least the bottom portion of the plant I might be able to tell more about it. If it is nematodes you know the only way to tell for sure is to pull one up and check the roots. If the roots look healthy and the plant has good soil moisture then you might be dealing with Bacterial wilt. It usually shows up after some serious heavy rain in hot weather with very warm soil. At least that has been my experience but hopefully that is not the case. Watering will not help a plant that has Bacterial Wilt but for a short while it can help plants with nematodes until they get too bad for it to do any good. With fusarium you should see some definite yellowing and to check the plant for that cut off the stem with the yellowing and see if the interior has a brownish color or dark yellowish color in it. That is a pretty good indicator of fusarium wilt.

Bill

It has rained every day since (4.5" total). Today is the first day the sun has come out. They didn't wilt with all the cloud cover, but they're back at it today. Tomorrow and the next day are forecasted sunny with highs in the upper 90s. I Will cut into one of the stems with yellow leaves if you would like to see the insides too.