Grafting thread 2021

zipcode · January 14, 2021

I see the yearly grafting threads seem to have stopped, so I made this one. I have not cultivated anything grafted yet, but will this year, and hopefully other beginners and veterans will also join.

My primary interest is grafting for vigor/longevity and not for disease. Growing in containers, soil disease is basically the only problem I don't have. Growing in containers comes with disadvantages like cramped roots, higher temperature swings from day to night, very hot medium in summer, higher salinity and pH (this is more due to my water).

I will start with eggplants and peppers, and if I manage to find some good rootstock for tomatoes, maybe I will also do a few of those.
For peppers I will be using Aji Amarillo as rootstock, which two years ago has been a monstrous plant grown in a small container, it had massive and efficient roots. I will probably only graft TAM Jalapeno as scion this year, which I've grown a lot, and know well what it can do, also I think pepper grafting might be a bit more tricky than others.

For eggplants, I have acquired solanum torvum seeds which are especially sold for grafting, because like with everything else, even weeds have varieties, and just any torvum collected from the side of the street will not yield optimal results.

So since the season is still quite a bit away, I only did a few things. For now, tested the germination of solanum torvum, since everyone says they don't germinate. I put them in a wet paper, and put them on the room heater and added 2 little beads of calcium nitrate (calcinit) as hopefully improve germination (pack says add gibberellin, but it's not like I have any). To my surprise, 29 out of 30 germinated in under 7 days, which is better than pretty much anything I grow except tomatoes. The plants are tiny, pack says seed 25 days before eggplant scion.

I also acquired some of those grafting clips, the big red ones for cleft grafting, and the smaller transparent ones for splice grafting, both from aliexpress, they seem quite ok.

Also at the end of 2020 I did a test, grafting some random eggplants on some random tomatoes and tomato on tomato. Only had 25% success for eggplant on tomato, and 100% for tomato on tomato (only did 2 tomatoes though). Not quite sure what the issue was, I think going too much towards the tip of the scion when cutting is not a good idea (to match stem diameters), as those all failed, also letting a bit more leaf surface seems to help, don't strip them too badly.

I will be using the cleft method (shoving the scion in split rootstock stem) for eggplant on torvum, which requires a bit bigger plants, as that seem to be the default method in japan and china. Not sure about the pepper, maybe the same.

January 14, 2021	#1
zipcode Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Romania/Germany , z 4-6 Posts: 1,582	Grafting thread 2021 I see the yearly grafting threads seem to have stopped, so I made this one. I have not cultivated anything grafted yet, but will this year, and hopefully other beginners and veterans will also join. My primary interest is grafting for vigor/longevity and not for disease. Growing in containers, soil disease is basically the only problem I don't have. Growing in containers comes with disadvantages like cramped roots, higher temperature swings from day to night, very hot medium in summer, higher salinity and pH (this is more due to my water). I will start with eggplants and peppers, and if I manage to find some good rootstock for tomatoes, maybe I will also do a few of those. For peppers I will be using Aji Amarillo as rootstock, which two years ago has been a monstrous plant grown in a small container, it had massive and efficient roots. I will probably only graft TAM Jalapeno as scion this year, which I've grown a lot, and know well what it can do, also I think pepper grafting might be a bit more tricky than others. For eggplants, I have acquired solanum torvum seeds which are especially sold for grafting, because like with everything else, even weeds have varieties, and just any torvum collected from the side of the street will not yield optimal results. So since the season is still quite a bit away, I only did a few things. For now, tested the germination of solanum torvum, since everyone says they don't germinate. I put them in a wet paper, and put them on the room heater and added 2 little beads of calcium nitrate (calcinit) as hopefully improve germination (pack says add gibberellin, but it's not like I have any). To my surprise, 29 out of 30 germinated in under 7 days, which is better than pretty much anything I grow except tomatoes. The plants are tiny, pack says seed 25 days before eggplant scion. I also acquired some of those grafting clips, the big red ones for cleft grafting, and the smaller transparent ones for splice grafting, both from aliexpress, they seem quite ok. Also at the end of 2020 I did a test, grafting some random eggplants on some random tomatoes and tomato on tomato. Only had 25% success for eggplant on tomato, and 100% for tomato on tomato (only did 2 tomatoes though). Not quite sure what the issue was, I think going too much towards the tip of the scion when cutting is not a good idea (to match stem diameters), as those all failed, also letting a bit more leaf surface seems to help, don't strip them too badly. I will be using the cleft method (shoving the scion in split rootstock stem) for eggplant on torvum, which requires a bit bigger plants, as that seem to be the default method in japan and china. Not sure about the pepper, maybe the same.