Post for Photos of Grafted Plants

[Delerium]

"I thought you were suggesting that since the Maxifort fruit are small tiny green things (yes, I've seen them do to some unwelcome monster suckers) that one might expect smaller scion fruit from a large-fruited variety attached to Maxifort."

Yes that's exactly what I am implying. That the small fruited root stock selections will produce smaller tomatoes compared to its ungrafted counterpart. That's just my observations. I am noticing a reduction in size of the tomatoes of grafted plants that use maxifort, multifort or Beaufort. More production but smaller tomatoes like in David's numbers. What I am suggesting is that if you use a Larger size tomato variety for the root stock it will make the size of the tomatoes on the scion size larger to (Just my observation - not a conclusion).

No disagreement here. But what your saying is the root stock side (size of the tomato) no matter what type of fruit it produces has no effect on the scion side right? Let's say we use a tomato variety that produces 2 lb tomatoes for the root stock and for the scion (say Big Rainbow) and use maxifort with the same scion (Big Rainbow) my guess is that the tomatoes on the root stock that produces 2 lb tomatoes will have an effect on the size (larger tomatoes) tomato on that scion. So if i understood you correctly your saying that root stock has no actually impact on fruit size in a side by side comparison?

[z_willus_d]

Originally Posted by Delerium

"So if i understood you correctly your saying that root stock has no actually impact on fruit size in a side by side comparison?

I believe it does, but not in the manner you are suggesting. The size of a root-stock's fruit is a genetic thing. Now, I've read there can be some kind of genetic osmosis at the ★★★★★★★★ of root-stock and scion, but I don't believe RS genes replace the scions.

So, yes, of course the root-stock selection will have affect fruit size, but through it's ability to better weather stress, to better feed nutrients through the plant, etc. etc. ... not because it's native fruit are more or less sized. If you look at David's results where he kept the grafted and non-grafted plants limited to a single-vine, you see the size was quite comparable (just more lb total in from the grafted). I bet if you did an experiment, grafted and non-grafted of a large fruited variety (say your "Big Rainbow") and you kept the number of tomatoes on each plant equivalent by way of blossom-pruning/etc., you'd find that the tomatoes from the grafted plant would be comparably sized or larger.

That's my take on it at least.
-naysen

[Delerium]

No I am not saying the RS genes replace scion genes (besides i have no understanding of that). But my observations are telling my gutt feeling that Larger variety choices for a root stock will make larger fruit.. lol I know i sound like a broken record here. When i was testing root stocks i was like Oh wow.. a variety that usually doesn't produce large tomatoes was pumping out some large tomatoes similar to the root stock. Thank you for explaining though - I am still learning and having a ton of fun with all this tomato grafting.

[z_willus_d]

Hi D- I'm right there with you on the learning curve. I guess I just want to be clear on the cause-effect relationships when we're drawing conclusions. There could be some under-the-cover inter-dependencies between the RS fruit size and the grafted scion's that I haven't fathomed. In the absence of any scientific causality, I'll refrain from drawing too broad-stroke of conclusions. Let's keep tracking the data and see where this takes us.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.
-naysen

[DavidP]

I also sort of doubt whether there could be an effect from the genetics of the rootstock variety. If I had to guess a reason would be down to larger fruit set and therefore less nutrition available to each fruit.

What I think is more interesting is why there was more fruit set. Neither the grafted or ungrafted plant were small plants by any means and there was opportunity for much more fruit set in both plants. I think one of the major problems here is going to be getting fruit set in hot conditions. Whilst normally temps are actually not too bad, I think average August temp is something like 95 and with usually relatively cool nights, we do have spikes into the 100's fairly often and even into 110 for a couple of days early in summer. I did see a paper from a lab expt that found that rootstock helped a plant survive heat stress, I think I posted a link in either this thread or the longer general grafting thread.

Anyway I'm glad I counted the fruits this year, the past few years experimenting with grafts I've thought that maybe there was a difference and certainly by the end of the summer the grafted plants looked better but never had a great feel of a quantifiable measure of differences. Still I'm aware thats only on relatively few plants this year but it jives with my past years experience as well.

I think there must be some advantage in yield and vigour or else why would the commercial greenhouse guys use grafted plants in their hydroponically grown plants, where there shouldn't be too much problem with soil disease as there isn't any soil. I think I posted some photos from a visit i made to such a place in page 2 or 3 of this thread.

I have tasted both fruits from ungrafted and grafted side by side at least for red brandywine and haven't found any differences but I'm probably not the best taste discriminator, would be interesting to get refractometer readings for them. I really doubt there would be any difference though.

Question is what expts for next year.

[b54red]

I have noticed a difference in the fruit size depending upon the variety of the rootstock. It doesn't seem to be related to the size of the fruit from the original rootstock. Tasti-Lee are not large tomatoes but I saw an increase in size of the scion fruit on some varieties of scions and smaller fruit on other varieties when using it for a rootstock. I also have noticed smaller fruit even without larger numbers on Multifort and Amelia rootstock grafts. Amelia is a fairly large fruited variety and Multifort is small. Most of the varieties of scion that were grafted onto Floralina produced slightly larger fruit or had better production than the scion but there were a few that did just the opposite. I am trying to keep up with how each variety was affected by the rootstock but am finding difficulty doing so because of the variables created by weather and foliage diseases. I am in the process of trying to decide which scions to graft to which rootstock for next year. I did so far come up with a couple of varieties that definitely had either increased production, better flavor or larger fruit depending upon the rootstock that was used. Below are a few of my observations with the graft/scion listed.

Floralina/Tarasenko-6 - Larger fruit with better flavor, larger vine but similar production

Floralina/Virginia Sweet - Better production, better size, better flavor with color of fruit affected for a month

Floralina/Brandywine Sudduth's - Better production, smaller vine, smaller fruit, taste was unaffected

Floralina/Red Barn - slightly smaller fruit with smaller vines and less production

Floralina/Barlow Jap - better flavor, smaller fruit

Floralina/Eva Purple Ball - much better production, slightly smaller fruit with flavor unaffected

Floralina/Red Siberian - smaller fruit, less flavor and poor production on a smaller vine

Tasti-Lee/Giant Belgium - Much better production, much better flavor but with smaller fruit

Tasti-Lee/Donskoi - Massively better production, larger more robust vine with more large fruits, flavor was unaffected

Tasti-Lee/Terhune - Much smaller fruit with less flavor and poor production on a smaller vine.

Tasti-Lee/Omar's Lebanese - Much better production and slightly better flavor with maybe a bit larger fruit since I got the largest tomato I have ever grown from this plant with no fruit culling and normal pruning to 4 stems.

Tasti-Lee/ Indian Stripe PL - better production but fruit was smaller, flavor was unaffected

My Amelia and Multifort grafts were only used in my fall plants and so I can't really be certain how they have done yet. I did find that some varieties of scions just did not thrive on these rootstock while others have grown like crazy. Since fruit size is usually smaller in the fall and vines are usually also much spindlier it is really too soon to tell with most of these grafts and I may have to wait til next year for more definitive results. The one result that is not questionable is the fact that grafting onto very resistant rootstock has made a huge difference in my fusarium problems.

Bill

[PA_Julia]

This next season I will be grafting Maxifort rootstock to Mega Marv as well as Big Zac in an effort to gain an advantage in the giant growing arena.

I would love to know what my personal best of 4.48 pounds from a Big Zac would be if Maxifort was the root system.

[livinonfaith]

Can't wait to see what you come up with, Julia!

[b54red]

Originally Posted by PA_Julia

This next season I will be grafting Maxifort rootstock to Mega Marv as well as Big Zac in an effort to gain an advantage in the giant growing arena.

I would love to know what my personal best of 4.48 pounds from a Big Zac would be if Maxifort was the root system.

Julia get ready to do some serious and constant pruning if Maxifort increases growth like Multifort does. It only takes a few days of leaving them alone to have a mess on your hands. I have a Lumpy Red grafted onto a Multifort growing right now as a fall plant. Lumpy is usually a very compact plant rarely getting much over 3 or 4 feet tall. The one I have grafted onto Multifort is huge and I have to prune it every couple of days because the foliage and sucker growth is explosive. I would hate to see what would happen if an explosive growing plant like Gary O' Sena was grafted onto a Multifort. Hmm. I may just try that next year.

Bill

[aclum]

Hi,

Though you all might like to see how my Red Barn Graft is coming along.

To back track a bit.... I started 8 RST-04-105-T (105) seeds with 100% germination. I did 8 grafts and 7 of those took. A day or two before they were about ready to come out of the healing chamber, I inadvertently let them get overheated and 3 of the 7 died. I was left with 4 grafted plants - Liz Birt, Marvel Stripe, Fish Lake Oxheart, and Red Barn. I eventually (duh!) realized that my one "Liz Birt" control had the wrong leaf type so this was eliminated from my little grafting experiment - which left me with 3 pairs of grafted/ungrafted plants.

At the moment, there's not really much difference between the grafted and ungrafted Marvel Stripe and Fish Lake Oxheart. But the Red Barn /105 seems to be doing significantly better than the ungrafted version.

The plants have identical growing conditions, btw - same sun, water, nutrients.

I'll post photos of the Fish Lake Oxheart and Marvel Stripe if they shart showing much difference between the grafted and ungrafted. For now, here are some photos over time of my 2 Red Barns. (I hope you can pick them out in the overall bed photos - they're on either side of the center post closest to the chain link fence). I think I've posted all of them before in one thread or another, but thought it would be nice to have them all in one post !

Anne

[z_willus_d]

Hi Anne, nice fall bed you have started there. I'll be curious to see if the grafting is helpful for a shorter fall season. On the one hand, the season is shorter so one would think less opportunity for the grafts to shine, since they tend to do best on the final laps. But then there's probably a lot more disease pressure with greater humidity and the preceding summer season detritus lingering.

I have my own fall experiment running now, but my plants haven't really grown in the past 2 weeks, so I'm not expecting any fruit out of it.

Thanks for sharing the pics.
-naysen

[aclum]

Hi Naysen,

Yes, I've been following all of your trials and tribulations fighting your disease problems with Ivan's suggestions. Some of it I find a bit confusing, but I gather than Ivan's suggestions seem to have worked to some degree at least. I hope the plants that are doing better take off soon so you can get some fruit off of them!

While the weather's been great here (very similar to yours), I do notice quite a bit of dew on the plants in the morning and I'm beginning to see some small tan spots which I think are signs of mildew. I plan to spray the affected leaves with some diluted non-fat milk (as suggested by someone on the forum) - seemed to work when I had the problem last spring. Other than that, things are going much better than I expected. They seem to be growing a lot faster than my spring crop did. I spotted a little green tomato on one of my Marvel Stripes today, so I hope I get at least a few fully ripe tomatoes before it gets too cold for things.

Anyway, good luck with your plants and keep us all posted on what's going on with them - and how you eventually plan to prep your soil for the coming season.

(Time sure flies! In just about 3 months or so it'll be time to start planting seeds for spring!!).

Anne

[aclum]

Hi Again,

Snapped a photo of my 2 Fish Lake Oxhearts today. Hope you can make the plants out OK - it's getting more and more difficult to get good photos as all the plants grow larger. The Non-grafted is the one on the left with fruit on it. Doesn't look terribly happy - not sure what the problem might be. To its right is the FLO grafted onto the 105 rootstock. As you can see it's doing quite a bit better than the non-grafted. (I also have a photo of the 2 plants not long after the grafts had healed).

The non-grafted Red Barn is catching up a bit to the grafted version and Marvel Stripes about the same - with a slight edge to the non-grafted. Not enough of a difference to warrant any photos today.

In all cases, the non-grafted versions were the first the bear fruit - probably because they didn't suffer the same early trauma as the grafted ones.

How's everyone else doing with their remaining grafts (if any - it's finally starting to cool off around here!)?

Anne

[z_willus_d]

Hi Anne, thanks for sharing your latest. My vines are long since dead and pulled. I have my eye on that 105 rootstock, so I'll be interested to learn how it performs for you through this fall season. I Hope you can manage one or more harvests from your vines before it gets too cold (sun too low on horizon).

I've noticed the TV traffic always slows to a crawl around this time of year. I think it's that between-season lull that most gardeners take part in. I'm glad you're still at it.

Have fun and enjoy!
-naysen

[aclum]

Hi Naysen,


Thanks! (This is the third time I've tried to compose this post. I keep losing it when I try to copy links or text from other websites!!!). Yeah, TV has been pretty quiet. I feel self conscious posting so much!!

I need to find out what's wrong with my non-grafted FLO that's so sad looking compared to the grafted version - so I'll know what the 105 is withstanding (assuming they would be subject to the same problems).


It'll be fun to see how everyone does with the 105 rootstock this spring. Here's some interesting stuff (you may have seen it already) regarding TMV and rootstock/scion incompatibility. Couldn't get the link from the website - but it's from the Arizona State University "Selecting Tomato Rootstock" that you can look up for the full thing. Here's the relevant portion as it might relate to 105:
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Many recently developed tomato cultivars and rootstocks have resistance to ToMV (tomato mosaic virus). However, when you graft tomato, ToMV resistance level of scion is recommended to be the same as that of rootstock (Oda, 1990; Yamakawa, 1982). This recommendation seems to be based on the studies conducted in Japan during 1970s when growers started using grafted tomato seedlings. According to the handbook written by Yamakawa (1978 and 1982), if scion is not resistant to ToMV or mildly resistant (Tm-1) but the rootstock is highly resistant (Tm-2a), for example, then hypersensitive reaction (causing programmed cell death) may be induced in rootstock tissue when scion is infected with ToMV. This may reduce the growth rate or, as the worst case, may induce a sudden death of grafted plants (Oda, 1990; Yamakawa, 1982). ToMV resistance levels (types) are Tm-1, Tm-2, and Tm-2a.
------------------------------------------------------

Now here's the link to the 105 and other DP Seeds tomato rootstock where it lists the TMV status (for lack of a better word)

http://www.dpseeds.com/rootstock

I'm still pondering what it all means ..... but I think it means 105 is a good thing re: TMV compatability issues. (Correct me if I wrong)!

You're probably sick of discussing it, but if you feel like it, it would be interesting to hear how you are prepping your garden for the spring (thinking of Ivan's recommendations, etc.) over in you disease thread.

Anne