My Fusarium Survivors

[Father'sDaughter]

Between the weather issues and the Fusarium, my tomato harvest has been really down this year. In past years I have been able to grow early and mid-season varieties and harvest quite a few tomatoes from my plants before they totally succumbed and turned into wilted, crunchy skeletons. Today I finally had the time to do some tomato plant triage and clear out any that were dead, or close to it, with no fruit on them that stood any chance of maturing.

In the process, I surprisingly found a few plants amongst the dead and dying that are still green and healthy with tomatoes in various states of maturity - Zogola, Indiana Red, Dester, Casino Chips, Romeo, and Franchi Giant Pear.

I also found a few that have one or two stems that are dead, but the other stem(s) are still healthy with fruit that should ripen - Russo Sicilian Togeta, Nudi Family Heirloon, Liz Birt.

It'll be interesting to see how some of these do next year--hopefully with more favorable weather patterns!

[b54red]

Zogola has been one of my favorites for a couple of years because of its resistance to fusarium. It isn't totally resistant but is about as good as any of the heirlooms I have tried. Another that you might want to try is NAR as it also shows strong tolerance.

Bill

[aclum]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for posting all that information on which tomatoes did well on which rootstock. Very interesting!

At one point you mentioned that your garden was "drowning," which made me wonder if you'd seen the following article:

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/fletcher/pro...h/grafting.pdf

with info on using eggplant rootstock for hot and wet conditions. I admit to not having read the whole article yet (particularly on the details of the actual grafting), but did skim the part about the eggplant rootstock.

DP seeds carries, I think, 3 different rootstocks specifically for eggplants AND tomatoes. I'm not sure if the rootstock are themselves hybrid (or interspecies??) eggplant or tomato, but will e-mail them to find out. I know NE Seeds distributes some of their tomato and watermelon rootstock, but I don't think they have the eggplant type.

I got some of their RST -04-105-T tomato rootstock (from NE seeds) and was really impressed by it. 100% germination all within a day or two or each other and in about the same time frame as my scion seeds, 7 of my 8 grafts took quickly with no problems (and the one that didn't take had a bad graft connection). Unfortunately I forgot to turn on the AC when I went out for a Dr's apt the other day and I sort of fried the scions on 3 of 4 grafts in one of my healing chambers. When I unclipped them to cut off the scion portion, I saw that the graft had totally taken on the ones that died, and the rootstocks looked good so I tried regrafting with a "petiole" graft ala Delerium.

I posted a few photos of my ping-tung eggplant/kbx tomato graft in the grafting photos thread. I want to try more along these lines but have been looking for an eggplant specifically suited to grafting.

Something to think about ......

Anne

[aclum]

Oops! This should have gone to a different thread (Bill's on Fusarium).....I'll go ahead and copy it over there. Sorry!!

Anne