Grafted versus non grafted tomatoes.

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Nature's Babe
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This year I purchased a couple of grafted tomatoes just to see if it was worth the extra cost. I actually took a sideshoot from the grafted tomato to root - it took well and I planted same stock in the greenhouse border, in fertile soil with rootgrow around the roots. The grafted one performed quite well but the same stock ungrafted in the greenhouse border performed much better and the fruit was larger in both quantity and size ! The ungrafted one is still giving me ripe fruits with quite a few still green to make some chutney it outlasted the grafted one which seemed to exhast itselsf sooner.

I also bought a couple of grafted chilli peppers. The grafted chilli peppers produced very well quantity-wise, lots of fruits, plenty, all ripened, but not as long as my ungrafted ones but unlike the tomato I did not have any of exactly the same stock ungrafted to make comparisons, so that is a job for next year !

Wondering what others thought of their grafted toms etc ?
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Kleftiwallah
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I'm sitting here wondering what all this grafting veggies is about! :shock:

Cheers, Tony.
Nature's Babe
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LOL well they are more costly - more profit I guess !
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PLUMPUDDING
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Hi NB, I'm interested in the results people get from their grafted plants, but haven't tried them myself as I've lots of seeds to use up from my own favourite varieties, and it seems a waste of money buying plants when you can grow them for free.

Do they have a special name, or are they common varieties grafted onto a special rootstock?

I did get a very good crop, and am still gathering fruits from the free Red Cherry seeds that came with the KG magazine. They are a lovely rich taste too, so worth growing again.
Nature's Babe
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I'm glad your toms are doing well plum pudding, the freebies sounded good. They had various varieties on a special rootstock, this year was the first year I tried them, and personally I didn't think it was worth the extra money for tomatoes ! Next year I will trial the peppers, one grafted and one not :D
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realfood
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Beechgrove gardens reported last week on their results of comparing grafted and ordinary plants of the same variety of tomatoes. The grafted plants produced about twice the quantity of tomatoes.
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I've bought grafted toms & melons - the toms are coming thick & fast & the neighbours are grateful..but only have one melon in the greenhouse & although the melon plants outdoors are very robust don't have a single melon on them. Last year was much better so I am putting it down to this weird year!

Westi
Westi
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Realfood, I agree they probably produced better than ordinary toms in growbags or compost - but not as well as the plants in good border soil with the added advantage of rootgrow in the greenhouse which produced more toms and larger fruit too.

Hi Westi, yes it has been a weird year, especially for fruit !
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Colin Miles
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Grafted tomatoes operate on the same priniciple as grafted apple trees. The rootstock provides the vigour and disease resistance to the variety which is grafted on to it. So taking cuttings from a grafted tomato makes no sense. You are merely taking cuttings from the 'fruiting' variety.

Way back in the early 70's I did graft my own tomatoes. Bit fiddly and as I have no notes on the end results I can only assume it wasn't worth the effort - or that I was simply too inexpert to acheive good results. And I didn't have a greenhouse at the time so it was on outdoor varieties and I don't think the weather that year was favourable for growing outdoors.
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Arnie
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Hi Everyone,

Anyone looking for grafting clips Moles Seeds have them, a spring loaded type, £7-85 per 50 they also have Rootstock seed for Cucumber F1 Triumph at £4-70 per 25 seeds and Tomato F1 Aegis at £ 9-05 per 50 seed.

Hope this is of some help

Regards

Arnie :wink:
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FelixLeiter
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By grafting top fruit such as apples and pears, it is possible to control the size and vigour or the fruiting tree by using dwarfing rootstocks or otherwise. It's reasonable to assume that the same effect could be achieved when grafting tomatoes, cucumbers and so on, although I can only suppose that a weak rootstock will result in a weak plant, rather than it resulting in one which is dwarf, or yields earlier or whatever. Grafting became popular as a technique employed by commercial growers in order to be able to grow tomatoes in the same ground in successive years without having to sanitise the soil. SInce few tomatoes are now grown this way, it is seldom practised these days, but seems to have found favour again with catalogues selling young plants in order to gain a bit of "added value". I'm not certain it's particularly profitable to sell grafted plants, given the time and effort required to raise them, but it generates sales nevertheless.
The primary reason to graft tomatoes is in order to protect against soil-borne pests and diseases. Unless there is a perennial risk of such pathogens, there is nothing to be gained by grafting. The only realistic comparison between grafted tomatoes and those which are not is if one group had survived and the others had actually succumbed to soil-borne beastliness; verticillium, for instance. Even then, grafting gives some resistance, not total immunity.
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Geoff
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We have already had a long discussion on this subject, also started by NB.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9517
There is also a brief discussion on grafted Aubergines.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10966
I'll review my results for self grafting properly and add them to the original post in a day or two. There are reasons other than disease for grafting, many of the American hits you get through Google are to do with imparting greater vigour into heritage varieties (that's what I concentrated on). My results with Tomatoes were mixed, I think as much through lack of technical expertise as anything, but the one Aubergine was a great success. Tigger was also experimenting, perhaps she will find time to post her conclusions.
Nature's Babe
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Yes Geoff, but this time I was comparing grafted to the same variety non grafted and given the advantage of symbiotic fungi which provides the plants with improved nutrient and water access in exchange for some of the sugars the tomato gets from the sun - well when its not raining :lol:
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Nature's Babe
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Arnie, thank you for kindly adding that link. :)
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