Grafting thread 2021

[biscuitridge]

Bill, have you ever tried adding anything to the water that you pre soak your DE with, and do you root prune the rootstock as your grafting. You probably add a little layer of dry DE on top of the wet DE after you insert the plant,just to try an minimize having wetness at soil level. I know you are the grafting guru,so I'm sure that you probably have tried all these things.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by biscuitridge

Bill, have you ever tried adding anything to the water that you pre soak your DE with, and do you root prune the rootstock as your grafting. You probably add a little layer of dry DE on top of the wet DE after you insert the plant,just to try an minimize having wetness at soil level. I know you are the grafting guru,so I'm sure that you probably have tried all these things.

Yes I have tried all of that but it doesn't help take the damping off bacteria out of the air. This is a re-curring issue down here for me when the weather is damp and cool. Our damp and cool results in incredibly high humidity so much so that I have been starting most of my seeds in fresh sterile DE for years now. The results have been spectacular but still the problem crops up when the weather is just right for damping off the occur. The damping off that is giving me the problems right now is not usually occurring at the soil line. It is happening at the juncture of the graft and even on the leaves and the only way to stop it is to remove the plants early from the chamber but that has it's drawbacks in the death of grafts that have not completely healed early. This is what I have had to resort to and it has caused a much higher rate of failure than I like to deal with but I am getting much better recovery than leaving them in the chambers too long.

What I am doing now is cracking the chamber early and giving the plants a bit of fertilized water on the third or fourth day instead of the sixth or seventh day. Then opening the chamber completely and hoping for the best. Despite the wilting that occurs doing this it has greatly improved my success rate because if they have almost healed the extra water in the cup allows the rootstock to send up the extra moisture needed to perk them back up much of the time.

This morning I am going to spray the inside of the greenhouse and all the young seedlings and every surface with a dilute bleach spray. It will be mild enough not to damage the seedlings but hopefully strong enough to remove spores on the plants themselves. I am already using sterilized chambers, cups, DE and tools. Hopefully this will help. I'll let you know.

Bill

[zipcode]

I noticed that although until now all my grafts took fairly well, being ready to sit without any cover in about 7-8 days (not directly in full sun though), when I transplanted them (I have two in each cup to save space), some of the roots were brown, so most likely pythium. There are still good roots so they will recover, but going forward I think I will keep the mix on the dry side until they get out of the humidity bag.

Which makes me think of Bill's problem. Why do you cut part of the roots if you have problems with pythium? This will surely make the problem worse, since there's less roots to survive the attack.

[b54red]

I am still having intermittent success with my grafting. I did two flats of 24 on the same day and had a total failure from one flat and about 75% success with the other. Both treated the exact same. Go figure. Like I have said before grafting is far more an art than a science for me. It looks like it will be sometime in May before I get any grafted plants to the point of being ready to set out in the garden. My un-grafted plants are looking terrific so I'm keeping my fingers crossed hoping that the long colder than normal winter has retarded my fusarium wilt problem and those plants will be productive. This is the first time in years that I have dared to set out plants that have not been grafted.

Bill

[Saskatchetoon]

I just wanted to visit this thread so that I could thank the participants of the 2017 version, specifically Bill, for the wealth of advice it contains.



I have been gathering supplies and doing research since last season in order to prepare myself for my first grafting experiment, this season. I thought that I had everything dialed in until I stumbled across that thread! The advice here has quickly convinced me to attempt my grafts with the DE and root trimming method.



I spent the last week gathering a few new supplies. I bought a large bag of DE and I modified a few humidity domes in order to make some makeshift healing chambers. My DE has been damp since last night, I gave the RS a drink last night as well. My neighbor/friend is going to come over and do the actual cutting for me this morning. He has better eyes, steadier hands, free scalpels from his work (family doctor), and he shares my interest in taking mundane tasks and making them as advanced or complicated as I possibly can. 🤣



Today is graft day so I need to get to setting up a station for the process. I'll document and photograph as much as I'm able to. Ill update y'all win or lose.


Thanks again,

Kevin.

[Saskatchetoon]

A bit of a visual timeline on this years tomato project:


Building a seed starting/grafting table out of some old plywood and 2x4's.

[Saskatchetoon]

Some growing timeline pics:

[Saskatchetoon]

My makeshift healing chambers and getting ready to graft:

[Saskatchetoon]

Ready and waiting for Dr Steadyhands to arrive. 😁

[Saskatchetoon]

Well everything is grafted so now I wait. A few lessons learned.. Buy more clip sizes. All I ordered were 2.5mm and 2.8mm and I wished I had some 2mm or 1.5mm. About 6-7 out of my 36 RS plants were too thin for my clips.


I would have also liked it if my plants were a touch more leggy... I know, that sounds odd. I just found myself not quite having enough length to bury them with the graft point high enough above the DE. Some were right down almost at the same level.
I trimmed all the scion plants down so that they weren't so top heavy before starting. Next time I will trim the tops as I go. I had about 15 "leftover" scion plants that I will keep growing as a backup if all my grafts fail and it would have served me better in that respect to leave the tops alone.


I will buy some of those thin breakable razor blades for next time. My friend brought over some surgical scalpels to use and I wasn't real crazy about how cleanly they cut the stems.



I have 3 healing chambers on the go. Two are blacked out and the third is not. All of them are under my grow table for the time being. I'm curious if there will be any difference based on the amount of light that they receive.


On the plus side, I did graft my two largest plants last weekend and one of them is now surviving quite well on the windowsill. So at least I know that success is a possibility, no matter how slight.


I'll maybe take a quick peak after 24hrs and give the domes another misting. Thanks again for the knowledge shared on this forum.


Kevin.

[Saskatchetoon]

My little survivor from last week, grafted into soil:

[biscuitridge]

Kevin- in my situation ,putting them in complete darkness is the worst thing that I can do because trying to get them re acclimated to light just doesn't work out well for me. Putting shade fabric over the healing chamber was my biggest breakthrough for success. Keep up the good work you will find out what works best for you, everyone seems to have they're own system, I'm enjoying your posts!

[Saskatchetoon]

Originally Posted by biscuitridge

Kevin- in my situation ,putting them in complete darkness is the worst thing that I can do because trying to get them re acclimated to light just doesn't work out well for me. Putting shade fabric over the healing chamber was my biggest breakthrough for success. Keep up the good work you will find out what works best for you, everyone seems to have they're own system, I'm enjoying your posts!

Thanks for the tip. I wasn't sure on the light requirements just because I'd read a few different ideas.


I'm going to try it your way, at least on two of them. I don't have a third clear dome and everywhere around me is sold out for now, so one tray will have to be dark.


Thanks,
Kevin

[zipcode]

Kevin, you are one prepared person, . You sure went at it full force.
From my attempts this and last year, I think the biggest thing is a very stable connection. Not sure why people rush and do it on tiny seedlings, they are also more fiddly. Those clips can open up some if needed, and you want it tight.
I also don't do full darkness (just under my table), it's really not needed as long as humidity is good, and yes, a sudden reacclimatization doesn't go that well, you will need to give them some normal air and indirect light after 3 or so days for a smoother healing.

Today I had to throw a lot of torvum seedlings, 20 or so. The reason is that I've been too successful until now, with 100% success, and already have more grafted seedlings than I can use or give away .

[GoDawgs]

I had planned on trying grafting this spring but got caught up in other garden stuff and by the time I remembered about the grafting, the plants were too big for the clips. Duh.

Once the garden is basically "in", I'm going to try again. But I will still grow out the rootstock plant to save seeds from it and just to see what kind of tomato it produces. Inquiring minds want to know just for the fun of it.