2023 Grafting Experience

[wxcrawler]

I’ve noticed over the past 3-5 years that root knot nematodes seem to be getting worse in my raised beds. So I decided to try grafting this year, to see if I can still have some success with growing my favorite tomatoes in my beds. I have such a small growing area that it's very difficult to do much rotation. I experimented in the Fall of ’22 using Bill’s method (b54red on Tomatoville) gleaned from several posts on the subject since 2017. I had about a 50% success rate in those experiments, just trying to get the techniques down. For the actual grafting in early 2023, I decided to change that and use Zendog’s method found here….. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP9vGVtYTEc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0ltPjFtgJU . I found this method to be easier and more successful, but your mileage may vary.

I’ll start out by saying my first grafting experience, as a whole, was not successful. But the grafting procedure was 100% successful. Because I didn’t really know how long the plants would take to recover, and because of our crazy cool/cold April, I didn’t get to plant the grafted tomato plants in the raised beds. I had to plant them in 15 gal. Smart Pots instead. So I was not able to test if grafting would help with my Root Knot Nematode problem. But I was able to gain quite a bit of information and experience to use next year.

I grafted 6 plants onto Estamino Rootstock….. 2 Break O’Day, 2 Captain Lucky, 1 KARMA Peach, and 1 Aunt Ginny’s Purple. I had a 100% success rate with the grafts using Zendog’s methods (I loosely used his methods for the recovery). I normally start my seeds around February 15 for an April 15 plant out date, and I use a pop-up greenhouse and heater through March/early April. I started my seeds for the grafting part of my season on January 25-29. This was too early. By April 5, these plants were already too big for 1 gallon pots. They had to be planted into something, and the weather was way too cold this year to go into the beds. Because of the cold April, I didn’t get to plant out my other plants in the raised beds until May 2. It just wasn’t in the cards this year to plant the grafts in the beds.

Here are my experiences with the 4 varieties I used, grafted onto Estamino……

Break O’Day- In my experience, this variety doesn’t have much disease resistance. But we grow them because love the flavor. I grow this tomato every year in Smart Pots or in my beds. They usually pump out about 15-20 tomatoes before they succumb to disease (not from the soil). Both of the plants grafted onto Estamino have over-produced compared to a normal season. I’ve pulled 21/19 from my plants, and each still have more than 10 fruit on them. Vegetative growth seemed close to normal. The plants weren’t any bushier or taller than typical. The disease resistance was NOT increased with grafting these onto Estamino Rootstock. But that’s to be expected growing it in a Smart Pot.

KARMA Peach- I didn’t think this one was going to make it, because it was extremely droopy immediately after the graft. But it never died and perked right up when the others did after a few days. I don’t think Estamino helped KARMA Peach much with production, vegetative growth, or disease resistance (in the Smart Pot). All of these were fairly normal in the grafted plant. Two things were slightly different in the grafted plant, compared to a typical, non-grafted one. I got many more heart-shaped fruit than normal. In a typical year KARMA Peach will occasionally throw out a heart or two. On this grafted plant, I had about 40% of the fruit that were more heart-like. The flavor was the same, when I could time the ripening correctly. This leads to the other difference. The fruit went through the ripening stages much faster than usual. This is also occurring with the Aunt Ginny’s Purple and Captain Lucky grafts. But it’s most prevalent in the KARMA Peach. In a typical year, as the fruit ripens, it slowly goes from a yellow/orange color, to an orange, to an orange/pink, then to a pink as it gets over ripe. This process usually takes 5-7 days for me. With this grafted plant, that happens in 2 days. The expression of the pink color in ripening is much faster than normal. The taste is still the same through those stages as normal, non-grafted fruit. But they over-ripen very quickly compared to normal. Since the Aunt Ginny’s Purple and Captain Lucky (but not Break O’Day) are doing this, I think it has to be something with the Estamino Rootstock.

Captain Lucky- This one is always one of the best in my garden every year regarding disease resistance. My 2 grafted plants have had very little disease again this season. Captain Lucky is not very productive here, but the flavor is just so good. I typically get 8-10 fruit on a plant every year. I found Captain Lucky to be slightly MORE productive being grafted onto Estamino. My plants have produced 11/9 fruit, with several more on both plants. Vegetative growth is fairly normal for both and they did not lose any disease resistance. As with the KARMA Peach, the fruit seem to ripen to the overripe stage faster than non-grafted.

Aunt Ginny’s Purple- This is my all-time favorite tomato. I found grafting to the Estamino rootstock greatly enhanced the production, compared to my typical experience. I usually get about 12-15 fruit from AGP. So far this year, I’m at 26 fruit with a couple more on there. The taste has been fantastic. Vegetative growth was similar to my non-grafted AGPs. It seems to me to have slightly more disease resistance than I typically see with Aunt Ginny’s Purple. As with KARMA Peach and Captain Lucky, the fruit seem to ripen fast from the grafted plant. They can go from blush to too soft pretty quickly. I do not experience this with non-grafted versions of AGP. Because they ripen faster on the plant, they also cracked more than typical.

I will graft again next year, and will do a better job of timing (hopefully). I’ll probably try to get some different Rootstock, just to try something else.

Lee

[b54red]

Congratulations on successfully grafting. As you do it more often it will become easier until like me you reach an age where shaky hands and arthritis can really be negative factors in your success rate. I looked at the YouTube video and that is how I started out grafting. I had to change to using the DE in my pots because of soil born damping off problems and I quit using skewers due to the mold that would accumulate on them during the healing process. I liked the skewers because they kept the plants from wilting over too much and separating the graft but in our moldy air it is too messy.

I grafted about 150 plants this year and planted out about 75 and shared the rest with friends and relatives who needed a way to grow good tasting varieties down here in soil disease heaven. The grafts are no ironclad guarantee that all soil diseases will be gone but they have been very rare for me since I settled on NE Seeds RST-04-106-T. Knock on wood but so far since using this rootstock I have not suffered a plant dying of Bacterial Wilt which used to be devastating when we had a lot of rain. I will still have one or two plants develop fusarium wilt each year but they usually live a long time whereas the non-grafted plants that get fusarium usually don't last very long at all once the hot weather gets here.

Bill