Cold Treatment plus Grafting

[aclum]

Hi,

I'm just starting my seeds for the upcoming season and want to try grafting as well as the cold treatment for the first time. From what I've gleaned from this website and elsewhere, the cold treatment for seedlings begins when the first true leaves are just emerging, and the grafting begins after at least two true sets of leaves have developed. So would it be reasonable to do a cold treatment on the very young seedlings and then graft them after the cold treatment is complete?

Seems like a reasonable thing to do, but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere so maybe there are some disadvantages to using cold treated seedlings for grafting that I don't know about.

BTW, using Grandeu and Katana from Kitizawa as my rootstock.

Thanks!
Anne

[amideutch]

First time I have heard of using the cold treatment and grafting together. But yes it makes sense to graft after the cold treatment. But then again too one might say since you are grafting what is the point. Give it a shot and see what happens. Here is a good video on (How To) grafting tomatoes from Johnny's seed using two different Techniques. Ami

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/MediaPlay...urce=JSSVideos

[aclum]

Hi Ami,

Thanks for the response. I'd been wanting to try the cold treatment for a while for all the advantages you pointed out in your cold treatment thread in the seed propagation forum from 2010. I've also gotten the "grafting bug" and after a couple of failed trial runs, it occurred to me that I might have better luck starting out with sturdier seedlings. (My previous failures involved the stems keeling over - I think mainly due to problems with humidity). I could maybe get studier plants for grafting by using older older plants, but it seems that most of the videos, articles, etc. that I've seen use seedlings for grafting rather than larger plants. So with the cold treatment I hoping that I can get the sturdy plants at a still young age for grafting. (Plus I have some plants I'm not grafting - as contrtols - that I'd like to have the benefits of the cold treatment).

I was posting mainly to see if anyone had heard of any particular problems associated with grafting seedlings that had been hardened off to some degree.

Thanks for the link to the Johnny's video. I've seen it before but watched it again this morning and picked up a few things I missed the first time around. ALOT of info on grafting on the web and, apparently, quite a few different approaches.

Anyway, I've got everything set up and seeds about ready for the cold treatment, so I guess I'll go ahead and give it a try.

Thanks again for your response,
Anne

[aclum]

Ami,

Along the lines of the Johnny's video you mentioned and other grafting instructions found online, I found this one site particularly interesting:

http://blog.gatheringtogetherfarm.co...r-farm-method/

It covers alot of territory on how to manage the seedlings prior to the actual grafting. Things like watering before grafting, how to slow down or speed up growth so that the seedlings will be a better match in size when it comes time to graft, the fact that relatively "leggy" seedlings seem to be desirable in the rootstock, etc. The actual grafting technique is pretty much the same as others describe. But as you can tell from my original post, my current concerns relate largely to the pre-grafting procedures.

BTW, I think I may have to break down and buy a humdity dome rather than using the jury-rigged healing chamber I have at the moment .

Anne

Since I've never performed the cold treatment (I may this year) and I've never purposely grafted plants, my experience "splinting" broken plants together causes me to believe grafting will work at any stage of growth. Like Ami, it would be interesting to see if both procedures on individual plants would cause multiple benefits. You may create tomato producing machines. If you add an electric toothbrush to aid pollination, no telling what you will have. You could call your growing tecnique "TGR" or tomato growing revolution. I'm just kidding you, but it would be interesting.

Ted

[rwsacto]

Anne,

I am also interested in grafting-first time. I usually raise the seedlings in the unheated garage as their "cold treatment" and schedule the lights on at night to prevent freezing . I will continue this method before and after grafting and healing. I plan to start seedlings in February.

Keep us informed,
Rick

[amideutch]

Anne, your site was a good read and good information. It looks like the cold treatment for the scion plants is a good thing as it would tend to be in a semi-dormant state which is a good thing when getting ready to do the graft. As far as the root stock is concerned I don't know as I've never grown any and do not know what the growth characteristics are and that's where you come in with your experiment.

I have some Beaufort rootstock seed I got from Johnny's last year so maybe this year I will give it a go as well. I ordered a Rapid Rooter tray this year and will use it to grow my seedlings for this project. Here is a picture of a tray I used a few years back. Ami

[aclum]

Hi Rick, Sounds like we're both doing basically the same thing, although I am starting indoors and not moving the seedling out to the unheated but insualted garage until after the first leaves start to emerge.

Ami,
I'm not actually using an "official tomato rootstock" but rather hybrids from Kitazawa seeds. Since I'm just learning the ins and outs of all this and on a budget, I didn't want to splurge on the relatively expensive rootstock seeds. Since I was ordering Momotaro seeds from Kitazawa anyway, I chanced upon their Grandeur and Katana tomatoes and they seemed like great choices for a rootstock for my purposes. Here's a link:

http://www.kitazawaseed.com/seed_403-126.html
http://www.kitazawaseed.com/seed_341-126.html

Besides good disease resistance, between the two of them, they have alot of other very desirable characteristics I'm looking for, including heat tolerance, early, vigorous, continuous harvest, crack resitance, short internodes, etc. not sure how much of this will transfer to the scion but thought it would be worth a try to see what happens. If I can squeeze out the space in my garden, I'll try to run controls for each of my grafted types.

I finally broke down and ordered a couple of humidity domes with trays - hopefully I'll have better luck with my next batch of grafts!

Anne

[maf]

Plants used for grafting need to be in very good health and growing strongly for best results. If you subject them to the stress of two weeks at 50-55F/10-13C immediately before grafting you may have issues with percentage of takes because these sorts of temperatures severely affect normal tomato plant functioning. The cold treatment is a form of stress, and prolonged stress will weaken an organism. Imagine if you were booked in for major transplant surgery, you would not prepare by going on an Arctic expedition for two weeks beforehand.

Edit: Of course, if you could give them the two weeks cold treatment and then return them to more normal temps for a week or so before grafting then the scions and rootstock will have had a chance to resume normal function. I am not sure that this would fit in with the schedule of best plant ages for grafting though.

Are most or all of the recommended root stock varieties hybrid. I've seen Celebrity and Big Beef suggested for root stock as well. They are hybrid. Are there any known OP varieties which have proven to have strong, disease resistant roots?

Ted

[bwaynef]

In the only kind of grafting I'm familiar with (trees/bonsai), common wisdom is to have kept the rootstock cool while letting the scion progress a little further.

I'm not sure how that practice would transfer to grafting tomatoes.

<edit> The post directly after this one seems to speak from experience that directly negates this post. </edit>

[Fusion_power]

causes me to believe grafting will work at any stage of growth

^-----Nope. Grafting only works when the scion and the rootstock are in the green gel stage of growth. If you do anything to take them out of that state, then the grafts will fail at a very high rate. If you cold stress seedlings, the stems get woody and will no longer graft so easily.

I would suggest doing the grafts first, then let them heal for 2 or 3 weeks, then do a cold treatment. This will allow you to keep the growth phases properly aligned.

DarJones

[aclum]

Thanks Dar!!

That was exactly what I was wondering about when I first wrote the OP. VERY helpful info! Guess I'd better run on out to the garage and bring my little seedlings back inside until after the grafting's done.

Thanks again!
Anne

[b54red]

I am going to try grafting for the first time this year to see if I can get a few of my plants to have superior fusarium resistance. I am using several different seeds for rootstock. I am using a couple of hybrids that are resistant to 3 races of fusarium and a couple that are resistant to 2 races. I am also using seeds from the tomato that is an F2 from a fluke Indian Stripe that has been the longest lasting tomato that I have ever grown. I don't know if the resistance it showed in the garden the last two years will be transferred to all the seeds but since they cost me nothing I'm going to give them a try.

I went to Walmart and bought a large translucent white plastic box with a lid to use as my healing chamber. It only cost 8 bucks and is large enough to hold at least 50 seedlings up to a foot tall.

I still have at least another week or two before my plants will be large enough to try the grafting. I'm just hoping I can do the delicate operation with my arthritic hands. I will be starting more rootstock seeds and scion seeds this week so I can have a continuous supply. Some will of course be grown normally as controls to see if there is any noticeable difference in the survivability rates between the different varieties and the grafted versions.

[Delerium]

I have been playing with some grafting as well and working with different root stocks. I am using a transparent tote as to maintain humidity. Will report anything if have anything worthwhile to report .