V and Probably F -- Which Rootstock?

[Father'sDaughter]

After some quality time in the garden this morning with my ailing plants and an iPad, it's time to face facts -- I'm definitely dealing with Verticullum Wilt and most likely some Fusarium. It's been three years now since I had a good harvest from my tomatoes, and this year was the worst. It even invaded my grow bags this year and has now taken out a few dwarf project plants. It's getting depressing.

I have now accepted that grafting will have to become part of my gardening routine and I've been doing a lot of reading on the subject today. What I'm having trouble deciding on is the rootstock.

I've narrowed it down to two - Estamino and RST-04-106-T. I grow about 66% medium sized pastes, 33% medium to large slicers, and one cherry each year. All are mid-season varieties with maybe an early or two in the mix. I plant out on Memorial Day and first frost is usually early to mid-October, so not an overly long growing season. Summers vary between wet and warm, or hot and steamy.

I'd love to hear some feedback and get recommendations from other grafters on which rootstock(s) might be best for which varieties given my location and growing season.

I'll still try to grow dwarf project varieties without grafting but maybe move the bags out of the garden and onto a solid surface that won't allow the roots to come in contact with the ground.

Oh, and any recommendations on grafting supply and rootstock vendors will also be appreciated!

[Ricky Shaw]

I bought a 20 seed pack of RST-04-106-T from TGS last winter, but never used it. I don't see me using them this year either, I didn't have many problems other than heat. If you'd like these let me know, I'd be glad to send them to you.

[PureHarvest]

Ricky, im looking in to grafting to overcome heat and cracking issues as well as increase yield.
The trials claim 40-50% yield bump.
Something like 85% of Korean crops are grafted because of the heat and downpours they get. My understanding is that they are doing it for more than just the disease pressure from those weather factors, but as a way to deal directly with the heat and wet soil. My challenge of dealing with bag growing is the combo of heat waves and always moist soil. Seems to favor cracking, so maybe grafting could help?
I am in touch with a small company a couple hours away that grafts tomatoes for farmers including some big tunnel growers. I am gonna see what they know.

[Gardeneer]

As far as I know root stock concerns the roots : ie. more vigor and some soil borne diseases tolerance. The fruits and foliage genetics is governed by the scion.
Now in some instances more vigor might result in improved production, coming from a bigger foliage.

[b54red]

For earlier production and probably more production I would go with the RST-104-06. If you want larger vines and probably larger fruits I would go with Estamino with some varieties of scion; but you will be later with your production of ripe fruit and more vegetative growth. I had better production and size with a few varieties using Multifort also; but with most scions it produced much more vegetative growth.

Since you are using grow bags I assume you don't want huge plants that are difficult to support so I would definitely go with the RST rootstock. Estamino and Multifort will give you much larger and more vigorous vines that require much more work in pruning and supporting them. They are generally a bit later to produce with most scions and with some they are very late and seem to lower the number of fruit while with others you will get much larger production.

I used all three of the above rootstocks and since I am not one to go for much larger fruit my main rootstock this past year was the RST one but I did have some real success with both of the others mainly on some of the later and larger beefsteak tomatoes. With your location and much shorter season I think the RST-104-06 rootstock will be more beneficial in getting more production before time runs out.

If you want a list of varieties of scions that were more productive or had much larger fruit with the Multifort and Estamino rootstock I will be glad to let you know which scions matched up with them the best. Overall my production numbers were better with the RST rootstock and much earlier in many cases but not all. Next year I plan on using mainly the RST-104-06 rootstock in my grafting due to the results I have gotten the last three years with the various rootstock experimenting I have done. I am still open to trying another variety of rootstock if I can find one that sounds promising and is not overly expensive.

Bill

[PureHarvest]

I was hoping you would see this thread Bill.
Thanks for the feedback. Sorry to sidetrack the thread FD.
Disease is definitely not my issue for grafting, but I appreciate your feedback Bill.
I read that eggplant roots can take standing water for 3 days, so I am curious to know if that could confer some splitting resistance in maters.
Splits and loss of production from heat are my issues.

[PureHarvest]

Here is a very good rootstock table from USDA.
FD, this may help along with Bill's suggestions:

http://www.vegetablegrafting.org/tom...otstock-table/

And Bill, looks like RST-04-107-T will add F race three and Verticillium to what you are using with Rst 106. Plus all the overlapping stuff goes from R to HR. The only bad thing is it has nothing for bacterial wilt.

[Father'sDaughter]

Thanks for the replies!

I was thinking the RST-04-106-T would be the best bet, especially for the pastes where yield is the most important factor. But wasn't sure whether to go with Estamino instead for the larger slicers.

I only grow the dwarfs and a couple of San Marzano Nano plants in grow bags, everything else is in raised beds. I used to be able to grow huge vining plants before the diseases came and pruning/managing them was not an issue. It would nice to spend time pruning and tying healthy plants again instead of looking at a bunch of scraggly things and trying to figure out which will be the next to die.

Are you able to give me an average of how much later the Estamino grafts were? One-to-two weeks or longer?

I'm thinking I might try half Estamino and half RST for my slicers and see if they give me the best of both worlds--some smaller sized early-to-mid-season fruit, and some larger ones towards the end of the season.

My other question, while we're here, is about the healing chamber. What do you use?

Anyone else care to share what the use during the healing time? This is the one part of the process I haven't sorted out yet.

[Scooty]

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

Thanks for the replies!

I was thinking the RST-04-106-T would be the best bet, especially for the pastes where yield is the most important factor. But wasn't sure whether to go with Estamino instead for the larger slicers.

I only grow the dwarfs and a couple of San Marzano Nano plants in grow bags, everything else is in raised beds. I used to be able to grow huge vining plants before the diseases came and pruning/managing them was not an issue. It would nice to spend time pruning and tying healthy plants again instead of looking at a bunch of scraggly things and trying to figure out which will be the next to die.

Are you able to give me an average of how much later the Estamino grafts were? One-to-two weeks or longer?

I'm thinking I might try half Estamino and half RST for my slicers and see if they give me the best of both worlds--some smaller sized early-to-mid-season fruit, and some larger ones towards the end of the season.

My other question, while we're here, is about the healing chamber. What do you use?

Anyone else care to share what the use during the healing time? This is the one part of the process I haven't sorted out yet.

Fusion_Power could give a lot of good advice too. I'm using He-man, DTO141TX, and Fortamino, Big Beef, and JBT as part of a rootstock experiment this year on Black Krims.

As for healing, I used seed trays with a high dome lids (w/vents) + heating mats + heating controllers. Either that or you can get one of the kits from johnny's seeds.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

Thanks for the replies!

I was thinking the RST-04-106-T would be the best bet, especially for the pastes where yield is the most important factor. But wasn't sure whether to go with Estamino instead for the larger slicers.

I only grow the dwarfs and a couple of San Marzano Nano plants in grow bags, everything else is in raised beds. I used to be able to grow huge vining plants before the diseases came and pruning/managing them was not an issue. It would nice to spend time pruning and tying healthy plants again instead of looking at a bunch of scraggly things and trying to figure out which will be the next to die.

Are you able to give me an average of how much later the Estamino grafts were? One-to-two weeks or longer?

I'm thinking I might try half Estamino and half RST for my slicers and see if they give me the best of both worlds--some smaller sized early-to-mid-season fruit, and some larger ones towards the end of the season.

My other question, while we're here, is about the healing chamber. What do you use?

Anyone else care to share what the use during the healing time? This is the one part of the process I haven't sorted out yet.

Estamino was generally one to two weeks later but some of them were as much as a month later. Per cluster numbers with RST-104-06-T were higher as well as earlier so for your regular toms and pastes I would definitely go with it. I got more of the very large tomatoes with the Estamino and Multifort but much later.

I think with the short season you have it might be best to go with the RST rootstock because you will probably get more lbs of fruit in the end even off the large beefsteak varieties. With our very long season it is easier to use the slower developing Estamino and Multifort and in the long run some of the scions actually make more on them because of the large vines that stay alive so long. This season only one scion definitely performed much better with the Estamino than the RST and that was Delicious. A couple of other scions produced more larger fruits grafted to either Estamino or Multifort but overall numbers were smaller. They were Limbaugh's Legacy and Brandywine Sudduth's. Since Cowlick's actually did better with RST I think that the difference could just be where they were located in the beds.

I used Estamino mainly last year and Multifort the year before and was happy with them both with most scions except for the much latter first fruit on many of them. Since most of my older vines were terribly affected by spider mites this year production on all those vines no matter what the rootstock was lessened but the ones with RST had already produced a lot of fruit while the other two roostock grafts had only been producing for a short while when the mites hit. I think if you want to try a few plants with the larger fruited varieties on Estamino I believe that could be a good solution as I will be doing that very same thing next year as I did this year. This year over 75% of my grafts were with the RST-104-06-T rootstock but I did have a few with both Multifort and Estamino rootstock.

I think the RST-104-06-T rootstock is more resistant to Bacterial Wilt as I have not seen a case of it in any of the grafts with that rootstock but have seen it with the other two a few times. I don't know if it is very resistant or just slightly resistant or those grafts were just lucky for the past two years. I did lose 8 plants to Bacterial Wilt the last two years and they were all Estamino and Multifort.

Bill

[Father'sDaughter]

As I've crossed every late variety off my list because the season closes in before I get any real yield and I don't grow for size, I will go wit the RST rootstock for all.

As I haven't found any vendors selling both it and Estamino, going with a larger number of seed of just one will cut down costs. If I order clips from the same vendor, even better.

Thanks again for all the input!

[Scooty]

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

As I haven't found any vendors selling both it and Estamino, going with a larger number of seed of just one will cut down costs. If I order clips from the same vendor, even better.

Highmowingseeds is where I got clips, probably best place you can go given they have free shipping and sell in increments you can choose from. It's also the reason I went Fortamino instead of RTX, single vendor shopping.

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

Thanks! I have plenty of the 1020 trays and seed starting inserts, so I'll go looking for an affordable source for the high dome lids.

Are you doing top or side grafts? For top, it's easy, just stick with the 72 cell seed trays. For the side, you go 3.5" square pots, and stick both plugs into the pot when grafting. Johnny's has a good guide for both with their kits, giving you an idea of the base setup minus the heating equipment.

side-grafting-starter-kit-manual
top-grafting-starter-kit-manual

These are probably the most sturdy high dome lids I could find. Thicker plastic, dual vents. If you don't want to spend too much, the cheap way is to get some free cake tray/domes from a bakery, or reuse them from a party. The kind with the black bottom and clear tops. Top grafts are going to be shorter so you can even do them in those individual clear pastry clamshells. I think I saw ChrisR do that.

[Father'sDaughter]

Originally Posted by Scooty

As for healing, I used seed trays with a high dome lids (w/vents) + heating mats + heating controllers. Either that or you can get one of the kits from johnny's seeds.

Thanks! I have plenty of the 1020 trays and seed starting inserts, so I'll go looking for an affordable source for the high dome lids.

[Father'sDaughter]

I've watched a lot of videos on both top and side techniques and I'm definitely going with top grafting for the first time around.

I have a few more questions to help me determine my shopping needs:

With my saved or purchased seeds I see close to 100% germination and anywhere from 0-100% with swap or trade seeds.

What is the typical germination rate for rootstock seeds?

Right now, if I want two plants of one variety, I will drop three seeds if they're my own or purchased seeds, and four if they are from trades or the swap. This typically gives me at least one extra seedling for each variety.

Is that enough for grafting or should I start more? In other words, if I'm careful to maintain the correct environment, what is the typical rate of failed grafts?

And I see clips are sold in different sizes. How do I determine what size to buy? Will I need more than one size?

Thanks everyone for sharing your knowledge!

[Scooty]

Side grafting is generally regarded has being "safer" because the desired scion still has its own root to feed off of, before the rootstock takes hold. With top-grafting, sometimes its 90% success, sometimes it's 20%. It all varies depending on your skill with graft, cleanliness of where you're grafting, and proper healing chamber environment. The size is just going to depend on how early or late you want to do the seedlings. Most people usually have a few sizes of clips on hand because sometimes one or two seedlings grow faster than the others.