Grafted tomatoes

[Tigger]

Well - mine/ours are making good progress in the tunnels. I have a fortnight off now so am going to spend some serious time bringing on the usual tomato stock to compare with the grafted ones.

I'll post an update in a week or so.

[Geoff]

Well time to post an embarrassing update!
I haven't looked after my Tomatoes very well but today I decided to plant them out into my boxes of home made compost like wooden grow bags.
Comparing the two grafted Bloody Butchers on the right with the ordinary ones on the left shows them all to be almost equally unimpressive. I have selected one of each (I grow 2 each of 5 varieties as my early batch) to grow on and see what happens. When I knocked them out to plant up I thought the root systems were slightly better on the grafted plants so perhaps there will eventually be a difference. I guess my lack of grafting skill and the unequal stem diameters, as shown in the second photograph, are part of the problem.
Interestingly I think my experiment with Aubergine Bonica on the same root stock has made a difference (grafted on the right), I have another ungrafted the same size as the one in the photograph. They had more equal diameter stems at grafting time.
(string dispenser patent applied for)

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[oldherbaceous]

Morning Geoff, i would say you have been up against it this month, with the lack of sunshine and warmth.

[Nature's Babe]

what rootstock did you use to graft the aubergines Geoff ? I got a couple of grafted tomatoes to try against my normal crop, they look quite good at the moment but luckily the greenhouse gets some warmth from the house.

It might be interesting to trial three types

1 grafted
2 with rootgrow applied
3 with just normal compost

[Geoff]

Thanks for those kind words OH. I've needed one of those Tardis greenhouses more than usual this year. Nothing seems to move on from one place to another properly with the cold and dark. Doesn't help that I seem to have more flowers than usual. I'm pleased with the 170 little plug Geraniums but they have to go somewhere once they are potted up. I over wintered some Verbena Bonariensis stock plants and once you start taking cuttings you can't stop, 60 of those growing on. We always used to raise Sweet Peas for our manure supplier but now I have two more "customers", mine are planted out but still looking after theirs (waiting for them to finish lambing!). Then there are a few other bedding plants so the Tomatoes have got a bit crowded out and I still haven't rescued the Peppers out of the propagator. I'll have to do some serious juggling round when the rain gets here.
NB the Aubergine is on the same Tomato Aegis stock as the Tomatoes. I haven't seen any articles on the subject but I can't see rootgrow having much effect on short term annuals as opposed to perennials where it has time to develop a relationship, as you might say.

[Nature's Babe]

Colonisation of roots takes 2-4 weeks Geoff so if done at the seedling stage it can be effective. There is no symbiosis with Brassicas though and it's no use applying when the ground is frozen. Aparrently they can increase root capacity up to 700 times!

[Geoff]

Difficult to assess this experiment in a pretty dreadful season but I suppose you could argue a difficult year is exactly when you need to see some benefit. Overall for Tomatoes it has probably shown little benefit for the investment of quite a bit of time and money. For the one Aubergine it has been a great success.
I have two greenhouses, a small one that I heat early on and a larger cold greenhouse. In the small greenhouse I did four head to head Tomato trials, one plant of each. Alicante and Auriga I thought there was little difference between the plants except that the grafted plants are perhaps hanging on a bit better now the season is coming to an end. Bloody Butcher was almost the opposite, started slightly better but little difference later. It made no difference to Sungold but with such a vigorous variety it is probably to be expected.
In the cold greenhouse we had the best crop off a Hillbilly beefsteak we have ever had but I didn't have an ungrafted plant as a control. Had a pair of Gardener's Delight and Bloody Butcher and didn't think there was any real difference for either variety.
I did put one each grafted Burpee Delicious and Caspian Pink outside to see if it made outdoor beefsteaks an option but the weather destroyed any chance of that being a sensible trial.
Whilst experimenting with grafting Tomatoes this year I also grafted one Aubergine Bonica. As I said on the other thread this was a great success.
I still have some rootstock seed left and of course the clips. I shall try again next year and particularly see if I can refine my grafting technique. One of the issues was grafting stems of different diameters. I worked with stock and variety sown in the same pot, I think I shall keep them separate which should give me the scope to match stem thicknesses. The stock and Aubergine variety were also sown in the same pot but they developed the same which perhaps contributed to the great success. I shall definitely be doing more Aubergines next year.

[Tigger]

Well - a bit more than a week later - our grafted tomatoes produced more fruit, earlier and bigger as they did last year. Having said that, this year's crop is poor overall, as are most of our fruit and veg.

We're planning on only growing grafted tomatoes next year, so we'll see how that works out!

[FelixLeiter]

We're planning on only growing grafted tomatoes next year, so we'll see how that works out!

Success?

[Westi]

My grafted toms in the greenhouse did & still doing well but such a good year my friends 'Holiday Toms' she gave me (planted outside) also doing well! Have to say the grafted ones last better though...& just got another 'full period' blight alert so the outside ones might be on the final farewell! Funny hey - last year too bad! This year - too good! Hard to compare in these extremes.

Westi