Grafting Thread 2022

[Saskatchetoon]

Hi guys. I took a look and didn't see a thread yet for grafting so I figured I'd open one up!


How are you all making out?



March 14th and my seeds just went into paper towels to officially kick off the season. Reassembled my growing table and starting to take stock of supplies needed



I'm cutting down my varieties this season to the two best performers from last year. I'm hoping to end up with six each of Cherokee Purple and Mortgage Lifter scions on Maxifort F1 rootstock. Give or take a dozen more plants for friend and neighbors that I gave excess plants to last season and are looking for more.


How was your yeild last season? Any new varieties that stood out for you?


My hit was probably the Cherokee. Lots of fused tomatoes but overall it was the variety that I enjoyed eating the most. Looking forward to learning more from you guys this year.



Kevin.

[Saskatchetoon]

Moved all the seedlings into their own 2x2 this morning. 15 each of Cherokee and Mortgage Lifter, 30 Maxifort. Had incredible success with germination. Running six T5's for 16 hours a day at maybe 4" above the tops.

[Koala Doug]

Lookin' good so far!

[b54red]

I definitely would not limit myself to only two varieties ever again. No matter how well a variety performs over time there will come a season in which it will tank on you. Last year both Brandywine Sudduth's and Brandywine Cowlick's were awful producers. I have been growing them both for years with mostly outstanding results but for some reason they did terrible last year. Cowlick's which is one of, if not the most dependable pink beefsteak made only a few smaller than normal tomatoes with blah flavor. The odd thing about last years season was that almost all of the marginal producers of the past did incredibly well resulting in my most productive season with the largest average size fruit. Maybe your luck will hold for a year or two but I always go with more variety since the first time I only planted two varieties and it was my most disastrous season in over forty years of growing tomatoes.

Good luck. Bill

[b54red]

I did my first set of grafts a week ago and my second set this morning. I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for some good grafts but they will be very late going into the garden down here. I graft for soil disease control and it has helped me tremendously since I found a rootstock that has not only nematode control, good fusarium resistance but also it helps with bacterial wilt which is a major destroyer of big healthy tomato plants down here.

Bill

[Saskatchetoon]

I haven't updated for awhile. I'll copy/paste my notes from this year's plants.


My dad wants to graft next year so I made a recording of our process for him and included a link below.



Cherokee Purple and Mortgage Lifter on Maxifort rootstock.


Test fit graft clips April 8th and 2.8mm were already tight. Will have to graft a week early, April 9th.

Grafted all plants (14 of each) 9:30am April 9th, 26 days after beginning germination. Plants were all larger than last year, 2.8mm clips on everything.

Grafting video:
https://youtu.be/OPzKGdr2Hrs

10 minutes open domes on Sunday. All plants actually looked decent-good.

15 minutes open domes on Monday. Looking a bit top heavy.

30 minutes open domes on Tuesday, cut a few excessive leaves off plants that were being weighed down by them. Only need to leave 1 or 2 leaves on each scion when trimming for graft.

Another half hour on Wednesday.

Thursday opened domes for an hour and at the end gave each plant a small squirt of 50% diluted Evolve liquid organic 3-2-2 fertilizer.

Friday also only comfortable opening domes for an hour

Saturday morning opened domes and put in table with light on. Light on for and hour and a half. Lids back on after 2 hours.

Sunday morning opened domes and lights for 2.5 hours. Shut off lights and put 12 strong plants in third tray. Covered wilting plants and left third tray uncovered.

Monday, took covers off and after 3 hours, moved 6-7 wilting plants under a dome, left the rest out. 3 plants out of 28 look like they may not make it at this point, will give them a couple more days to prove me wrong.

Tuesday opened dome and lights on at 7:30 am. Only two plants look weak this morning.

Wednesday 26 out of 28 survivors. All survivors getting 16hrs of light at about 10" above tops. Feeding diluted organic fert as needed.

Friday, day 13 post graft moved all plants into soil. Alternating between fan and no fan. Low speed at this point, still 16hrs light, bottom feeding.

April 30th still 16hrs of light, bottom feeding half a jug of water per tray, fan on a few hours a day. Plants are restoring foliage removed during graft.

May 11th moved grow table/light into the dining room and will begin rotating plants into the sunlight during the day, possibly spend a bit of time outdoors on nice days.

Began hardening plants on May 21st 1-2 hrs at a time. 43 days since grafting, 69 days from germination.

Planted out somewhere around May 22nd. I didn't have much weather to harden and as a result all plants for scalded from the sun. Wind storm end of May broke off some limbs and broke one Cherokee plant in half. Replaced the broken Cherokee with one of my spare plants. All plants took about 2 weeks to bounce back from the sunburn.

Noticed first tomato growing June 18th.

July 15th update, plants have topped the cages at 4ft. Many flowers and tomatoes growing on both varieties.

July 17th, loads of fruit set on both varieties.

[Saskatchetoon]

July 17th plants.

[biscuitridge]

For me and my rootstock and my climate I can graft and in 4 days have them in the ground with 100% success rate,it used to take a week and a half to accomplish the same thing but over the years I've got it down to 4 to 5 days with 100%success.

[Hensaplenty]

Thanks for this thread. Very informative.

[Saskatchetoon]

Any helpful info that you.might get from me is a direct descendant of B54RED (Bill). I wouldn't have been able to graft without spending hours reading his insights in the grafting threads



I'm a copycat. Bill's the real deal!

[Saskatchetoon]

What changes have you made to get such awesome results, Hensapleny?

[Hensaplenty]

Saskatchetoon, I have not yet tried grafting but may after this season. I've lost a large number of tomato plants this year to Southern Stem Blight. It occurs naturally in the soil. It attacks most anything. One of our county extension agents recommends wrapping stems just above and just below soil surface in aluminum foil. I did, and have had the worst year ever with SSB. I can say this foil did NOT prevent SSB. It may have fostered it. I will go back and read what Bill has reported. I know I have used many of his recommendations regarding varieties that do well in the southern heat.

[biscuitridge]

At first I followed some university videos where they said to put the grafted plants in complete darkness for 24 hrs after grafting, that was the worst thing I could ever do,I found it extremely difficult to get them acclimated back to light so now I put the healing chamber with 2 layers of shade cloth under my grow lights 24/7 and at about day 2 I take one layer off and then day 3 the last layer comes off, the first darkness they see is at night after I plant them out.
I also use DE at the time of grafting, but the initial seeding is in soiless mix, I also trim roots on the rootstock at time of grafting as well as some of the canopy leaves so as to keep it in a balanced condition so it won't tend to lean one way or the other if it droops a bit after grafting.

[biscuitridge]

There's a lot of little nuances that I do that may effect the shortness of the healing process, you'll also want to keep the healing chamber at 78 to 80 if possible. You also need to open the lid quite often to let fresh air in, I just open the lid up and down a couple times each time I do it.

[Saskatchetoon]

Originally Posted by biscuitridge

At first I followed some university videos where they said to put the grafted plants in complete darkness for 24 hrs after grafting, that was the worst thing I could ever do,I found it extremely difficult to get them acclimated back to light so now I put the healing chamber with 2 layers of shade cloth under my grow lights 24/7 and at about day 2 I take one layer off and then day 3 the last layer comes off, the first darkness they see is at night after I plant them out.
I also use DE at the time of grafting, but the initial seeding is in soiless mix, I also trim roots on the rootstock at time of grafting as well as some of the canopy leaves so as to keep it in a balanced condition so it won't tend to lean one way or the other if it droops a bit after grafting.

I remember you mentioning the light/dark last season. I had one some blacked out and one just dimmed and the blacked out one took longer. I just used clear domes with a dish towel on top this year, and removed the cloth after a day or two.