Jimson Weed Grafting

Cole_Robbie · June 11, 2014

There's really not a lot of information about this subject other than "don't do it."

This is the best link I found:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/196...ARDS_000278209
ANNALS OF MEDICINE about Jimson-weed poisoning of which 3 members of one family were victims. 5 people, Mr. & Mrs. Mason, Mr. & Mrs. Smart, & the Smart's 3-year-old son sat down to a midday dinner in the kitchen of a house they chared on a tobacco farm in the Caney Valley hills of Hawking County, Tenn. Smart, who drove the family to the doctor's office, told him that his brother-in-law & Mrs. Smart had taken sick right after eating; a little later Mrs. Mason took sick, too. Smart & the boy were all right. The symptoms were vertigo, blurred vision, dry mouth, generalized weakness, nausea, & in Mason's case, hallucinations. Both were wildly delirious. Mrs. Mason was still weak. They were taken to the Valley Community Hospital. Sometime later Smart mentioned to a doctor that the tomatoes they had eaten were grafts. Mason had grafted a tomato plant to a Jimson-weed plant. He had gotten the idea from a man named Clayton. Clay ton was interviewed & said that he & his family had been growing & eating Jimson-weed tomatoes for years. Clayton had, however, pruned his plants, whereas Mason's had retained their leaves. The question of how Clayton could have eaten his tomatoes with impunity is still unanswered.

I think that last part is fascinating. It could be that letting Jimson leaves grow out of the lower half of the graft is what allows the toxic alkaloids to form in the tomatoes.

The reason I'm interested in the topic is that I'm tired of the deer eating all the tomatoes out of my grandparent's gardens. If I could grow a toxic tomato, they would eat that and hopefully get sick enough to learn to stay out of the garden.

It would make a fun experiment, but I don't have a lab to test the tomatoes to see which ones are the most poisonous. I also suspect that Jimson weed could be the best grafting rootstock in the world, as long as you keep the lower half pruned very carefully.

June 11, 2014	#1
Cole_Robbie Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: Illinois, zone 6 Posts: 8,407	Jimson Weed Grafting There's really not a lot of information about this subject other than "don't do it." This is the best link I found: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/196...ARDS_000278209 ANNALS OF MEDICINE about Jimson-weed poisoning of which 3 members of one family were victims. 5 people, Mr. & Mrs. Mason, Mr. & Mrs. Smart, & the Smart's 3-year-old son sat down to a midday dinner in the kitchen of a house they chared on a tobacco farm in the Caney Valley hills of Hawking County, Tenn. Smart, who drove the family to the doctor's office, told him that his brother-in-law & Mrs. Smart had taken sick right after eating; a little later Mrs. Mason took sick, too. Smart & the boy were all right. The symptoms were vertigo, blurred vision, dry mouth, generalized weakness, nausea, & in Mason's case, hallucinations. Both were wildly delirious. Mrs. Mason was still weak. They were taken to the Valley Community Hospital. Sometime later Smart mentioned to a doctor that the tomatoes they had eaten were grafts. Mason had grafted a tomato plant to a Jimson-weed plant. He had gotten the idea from a man named Clayton. Clay ton was interviewed & said that he & his family had been growing & eating Jimson-weed tomatoes for years. Clayton had, however, pruned his plants, whereas Mason's had retained their leaves. The question of how Clayton could have eaten his tomatoes with impunity is still unanswered. I think that last part is fascinating. It could be that letting Jimson leaves grow out of the lower half of the graft is what allows the toxic alkaloids to form in the tomatoes. The reason I'm interested in the topic is that I'm tired of the deer eating all the tomatoes out of my grandparent's gardens. If I could grow a toxic tomato, they would eat that and hopefully get sick enough to learn to stay out of the garden. It would make a fun experiment, but I don't have a lab to test the tomatoes to see which ones are the most poisonous. I also suspect that Jimson weed could be the best grafting rootstock in the world, as long as you keep the lower half pruned very carefully.