Going out on a limb here!

[camochef]

I've been growing tomatoes for over 50 some odd years now. Some years between 400-600 plants per year. Have been reducing those numbers the past few years. This year I got it down to 23 tomato plants!!!
Twenty-one of my favorites and a couple experiments.

Well I just finished eating the best tasting tomato I've ever tasted...I know, this is a bold statement, but this plant has been unreal since it went into the ground and it's now producing something special.

Last year my best tasting tomato was Purple Dog Creek, other years have seen Amazon Chocolate, Dana's Dusky Rose, Cowlick Brandywine and Brandywine Glicks as tops in taste. Also crosses like Liz Birt and Bear Creek as well as Dora.

Earlier this season Liz Birt was winning till I ate my first Brandywine-Sudduth's. Then the other day I had my first Purple Dog creek and was pleased to see it still had that Great "adult" taste. Almost like a fine wine. I felt for sure it was going to maintain its title...wrong!

Today I ate an 8 5/8 oz. Dana's Dusky Rose which is about average size for them. A really tasty medium sized tomato. I followed it with a 14 1/2 oz. Dana's Dusky Rose -G...that had been grafted onto rootstock from Johnny's.
This is not your average sized DDR. It's almost twice the average size. The tomato is not quite as dark colored as the original DDR's from seed that I've been growing for the past few years. It's very meaty, yet still quite juicy. It's the taste that really made it shine! My mind may not be as sharp as it was in the past, nor my tastebuds as sensitive, but this is without a doubt, the best tasting tomato I've ever eaten.
The plant itself has surpassed everything in the garden, and it's loaded with huge still green tomatoes.
This is my first grafted tomato and its impressed me in everyway possible now. Wish I knew more about grafted tomatoes. I saved some seeds from it but don't know what they'll produce. If anything at all.
Enjoy!
Camo

[carolyn137]

Mike, had you grown the newer version of DDR not on a grafted plant I would expect it would taste the same b'c grafting should not change the taste of fruits on a graft.

Nope, I haven't done any grafting myself but have done one heck of a lot of research for others about it.

The seeds from the DDR fruits as grafted should give you the same seeds since grafting does not change the traits of a variety. it may impart certain diseases tolerances, mainly systemic diseases, and may increase fruit production, depending on the specific rootstock used and whether the grafted plants are grown outside or in a greenhouse.

But the variety itself remains the same.

[Fusion_power]

Carolyn, IME, grafting does indeed change the flavor of the fruit. They are usually sweeter and have more intense flavors than own-rooted plants .

DarJones

[kurt]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Mike, had you grown the newer version of DDR not on a grafted plant I would expect it would taste the same b'c grafting should not change the taste of fruits on a graft.

Nope, I haven't done any grafting myself but have done one heck of a lot of research for others about it.

The seeds from the DDR fruits as grafted should give you the same seeds since grafting does not change the traits of a variety. it may impart certain diseases tolerances, mainly systemic diseases, and may increase fruit production, depending on the specific rootstock used and whether the grafted plants are grown outside or in a greenhouse.

But the variety itself remains the same.

On the little I have read outside of this forum thats lends a question,howcome nobody lists,mentions,or sells "grafted"seeds?I have not seen it yet has anybody?

[Mlm1]

My all time favorite tomato so far was a Mullen's Mortgage Lifter grafted onto Maxifort. I hadn't actually thought about it before but now that Camo mentions it I would have to agree. I think the tomatoes from the grafted plants taste better. I do save seed from tomatoes harvested from grafted plants. I haven't noticed any difference in plants grown from the seed.
Marla

[bitterwort]

I don't have enough space to grow any controls, but I wonder if a better ratio of foliage to fruit might account for at least part of any differences. I can't spray so I'm grafting my plants for increased vigor to fight foliage diseases and except for varieties that really struggle with early blight, the foliage on my Maxifort grafts is almost extreme in its coverage. Someone in thread a few years back proposed that indeterminates tended to taste better than determinates due to improved foliage to fruit ratio. I just wonder if that might be a factor here. (And then there's always the ability of that rootstock to mine every bit of goodness out of the soil.) Anecdotal, of course.

[Mlm1]

Originally Posted by bitterwort

. (And then there's always the ability of that rootstock to mine every bit of goodness out of the soil.

That's what I was thinking also but you said it more poetically than I would have.

Marla

[carolyn137]

WHich begs my question as to why fruits on a grafted plant should taste better, how can that happen, than the same variety grown from seed.

And are the grafted plants and plants for the same variety grown from seed both grown in the same season so that a direct comparison can be made?

I'm thinking of tomato physiology and where the many organic cmpounds are synthesized that determine taste and it's not via the roots. so I'm having a hard time understanding how a grafted plant can have fruits with a different taste.

If true, there are lots of rootstocks out there that can be used and would that mean that if the same variety was grafted onto four different rootstocks and grown in the same season as the non-grafted, would it suggest that the taste of fruits on the four different rootstocks would be different? If so why and how.

I didn't take the time to go looking for the msot recent thread on grafting where Marla, Steve's sister ( Heritage seeds) was talking about grafting in terms of disease tolerances and in that thread I linked to several articles of Dr. David Francis at Ohio State, whom I know, who feels that using the variety Celebrity works well as a rootstock in some situations. And he has used several different rootstocks and I don't think I've ever seen him say that the taste of fruits differ depending on the rootstock.

I can try and find that thread if you want me to or any of you can do the search yourself and use Marla as the user name and check posts, not threads, since I can't remember if she started the thread or not.

[Mlm1]

Carolyn, I think this is the post you are referring to
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...t=Mighty+matos

Marla

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by bitterwort

I don't have enough space to grow any controls, but I wonder if a better ratio of foliage to fruit might account for at least part of any differences. I can't spray so I'm grafting my plants for increased vigor to fight foliage diseases and except for varieties that really struggle with early blight, the foliage on my Maxifort grafts is almost extreme in its coverage. Someone in thread a few years back proposed that indeterminates tended to taste better than determinates due to improved foliage to fruit ratio. I just wonder if that might be a factor here. (And then there's always the ability of that rootstock to mine every bit of goodness out of the soil.) Anecdotal, of course.

Good point, but please read my post after yours since yours wasn't there when I started my post.

THe four most common foliage diseases are Early Blight( A. solani), Septoria Leaf Spot, both fungal, and then Bacterial Speck and Spot. I wasn't aware that any of the rootstocks had genes involved with tolerence to those foliage diseases, so you have to bring me up to date on which one (s) they/ those are.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Mlm1

Carolyn, I think this is the post you are referring to
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...t=Mighty+matos

Marla

It is, and note to self that Marla is NOT your user name. When I'm perfect I'll post that publicaly.

[camochef]

Thanks to all that have commented or expressed opinons on grafted tomatoes.

Carolyn,
I've been growing Dana's Dusky Rose for three or four years now. However, this grafted plant was given to me by Dana and went into the garden a full week after my larger plants. It not only grew much faster than the earlier plants, it put on many more tomatoes and they are much larger (about twice the size of the DDR started from seed thats two plants away from it).

The first ripe tomatoes from each were only a day apart. The one from seed is that dark mahogany color with dark green shoulders where the grafted DDR has an almost pink overtone to it and no green shoulders to speak of. The grafted one is much more meaty...still quite juicy but very solid meat and not near as many seed and gel areas.

While the smaller, original is a great tasting tomato, it's not near as explosive on the tongue. Not literally, but the taste is unlike the "watered down" taste of the original from seed. Hard to explain the difference in taste even for someone that's been taste testing tomatoes for years now.

I was just so excited by the results between the two that I had to sit down and put something out there. I did take some pictures but they aren't going to show the difference in taste.

This brings about another question. I used to do a lot of grafting and budding on fruit trees like apples and pears. Enjoyed having trees with 7-8 different types of fruit on each one. You can probably see where this is going...can more than one variety of tomato be grafted onto one rootstock?

It would be great to have a plant that has a pink like Brandywine-Sudduths or Glicks and say a dark tomato like Amazon Chocolate or DDR on the same plant. Or maybe Bear Creek and Liz Birt growing on one plant. Might be worth playing around with.
After all, I initally couldn't see the sense in grafting onto different rootstocks, I mean you have to start one plant to graft it onto another rootstock, and commen sense seems to point to losing ground (time), by doing so. After seeing the difference's I'm seeing now, I think I'm changing my tune.

Thanks again,
Enjoy,
Camo

[Fusion_power]

Carolyn, I have grown grafted plants of Little Lucky side by side with ungrafted Little Lucky. The results were clearly in favor of the grafted plants. Fruits were sweeter, much more numerous, and flavor was more intense from the grafted plants.

Fruit stress is one of the factors in early blight spread on tomato plants. A plant that has very low fruit load is relatively resistant to EB compared to a plant with heavy fruit load. My memory says you can search for "tomato alkyl carotenoid" and after a bit of wading should find some relevant documents. In other words, the grafted plant has a more vigorous rootstock. This permits the scion to produce more leaf canopy and therefore more efficiently produce the compounds that increase disease tolerance.

If you think back to major outbreaks of EB, you might notice that it hits hardest when fruit load on the plants is heaviest.

DarJones

[jennifer28]

Originally Posted by camochef

.

This brings about another question. I used to do a lot of grafting and budding on fruit trees like apples and pears. Enjoyed having trees with 7-8 different types of fruit on each one. You can probably see where this is going...can more than one variety of tomato be grafted onto one rootstock?

Camo

Since you posted this thread I've been doing some reading on tomato grafting. I did read that you can indeed graft more than one different kind of scion onto a single rootstock. I have 4 sisters and one of them studied horticulture here in CT at Uconn. One of her best presents to me was a grafted apple tree. I loved that thing, I thought it was magic! Anyway, for anyone who is interested here is a link to the Uconn horticulture website that explains different tomato grafting techniques:

http://www.hort.uconn.edu/ipm/greenhs/htms/Tomgraft.htm

[Mudman]

I have recently researched some information on grafting, and they have found that when grafting tree, the cells from one tree did indeed travel a greater distance than they had previously thought into the other variety of tree. It would seem to me that this would happen even more easily with a fast growing vine like a tomato. So maybe it is possible that grafting does contibute subtle changes to plant genetics? I will try to dig up the source of this if I have time.