Best grafted tomato varieties?

[DavidP]

Originally Posted by b54red

If you are growing multiple plants of the same variety why not try different numbers of stems on a few and compare the results. It has taken me quite a few years of trial and error to find out which varieties do better with what kind of pruning so now I have plants with anywhere from one to eight stems growing during every season.

Any recommendations on single stemming vs just allowing natural bushing. I have 3 grafted plants on Maxifort and corresponding ungrafted (Red Brandywine and Cherokee Purple) and I'm trying single stem and also just letting them getting on with it in a a cage. In past years using Maxifort and Beaufort I've got large plants but not always great production but thats always just with no pruning.
Don't have any problems with foliage diseases here but do have potential for root knot nematodes, although plants will go thru the winter but then when they wake up again in Spring again I do seem to get foliage disease then, which I think is mites most likely, so now I've stopped trying to overwinter plants.

I'm interested in seeing how pruning affects the productive quality of the plants. I seem to have had a problem with almost too much vegetative growth in the past, for the last three seasons anyway since I started playing around with grafting.

At the moment grafted and ungrafted plants look pretty much the same but thats mainly because the grafts have finally caught up with their ungrafted siblings, usually for here on out they will outgrow the ungrafted. My poor technique means a large setback on grafted plants.

[b54red]

David I have never grown Red Brandywine but if it has the same kind of growth pattern as Brandywine Sudduth's then I would not recommend going with a single stem on it. If on the other hand it is has very dense foliage then it will probably do fine with a single stem. Since you are growing it in a cage I would probably go with two stems unless it is a very narrow cage. If you don't have much experience with pruning I think you might be better off starting with keeping several of your plants to two stems first before venturing into the extreme pruning required to have just a single stem. That would give you a good chance to practice with your pruning and also reduce the risk of your plants not having enough foliage to protect the tomatoes from too much sun. I see no advantage to using cages for single stem plants. One good sturdy very tall stake would be better or a trellis like I use.

If you do decide to go with a plant as a single stem then I would recommend trying it first with your Cherokee Purple. It did fantastic for me last year as a single stem plant. As a matter of fact it produced more pounds of tomatoes than any Cherokee Purple I have ever grown; but not because of more fruit but the size of the fruits was larger overall and more fruits set per truss. I don't know if it would do that every time but it was amazing to me. I just set out my first CP for the year yesterday and it is a graft onto an Amelia rootstock and I will try it as a single stem hopefully. I finally got a couple of my grafts onto Amelia and Multifort into the garden yesterday and am looking forward to seeing how they grow once in the ground.

Remember when doing this pruning it is much better to remove the suckers when small and if the stem forks wait until one side of the fork produces a blossom truss then remove the other one. Remember to keep checking lower down on the plant for new suckers even if they have been removed they will sometimes still send out new ones that you have to keep removing. If you go with a single stem you have to be very careful not to cut or break the stems growth tip or you will have to wait a long time for a new sucker to form to get the plant back growing again. That is another good reason I think you should start with at least two stems for your first time trying the pruning. If you find that two is too much you can always pinch off the growth tip on the weaker stem and stop it from growing any more.

Bill

[beeman]

There is a very good video on suckering, pruning, stringing etc at the bottom of this page, best I have seen in a long time.
http://betterheirlooms.com/blog/

[b54red]

Originally Posted by z_willus_d

Bill, thanks for the report and for posting your graft vs. ungraft results. Let's keep a close eye on this rough "experiment" as it progresses through the season.

I never start a season wanting to spray Daconil, as I'm forbid to do so to an extent by she who will not be named -- and probably for good general reasons. The hope every year is that my organics (Actinovate, Excel-LG [systemic], Biota-Max, MycoGrow dunks, technique [grafting, spacing, etc.], etc.] will somehow see me through w/out the need. That hope is always dashed in the end, but if I give up and start spraying stuff like Daconil from the get-go, I'm not sure I would continue to invest in tomato gardening. There has to be a way to do this 100% organic w/out loosing plants. So I'll be stuck in this quixotic quest for perfection in the garden, probably for the rest of my life...or until I move on to something else, like wine-making.

What I'm hoping I'll find here pretty soon is that none of the grafted plants show signs of fungus/wilt, and that my spray regime keeps the mites in check. If that proves out, then I'll go 100% grafted next year and eliminate the daconil spray, which as you stated, at this point is less than ideal for helping the effected plants. I still think it can help stave off the spread, if not to the upper leaves of the affected plant, at least to adjacent vines.

I'm looking forward to some more pictures streaming in from the community of grafters...particularly of A-B comparisons in as close to approximate conditions as possible.
-naysen

Naysen, I am only planting grafted plants in my garden this year. I have let a couple of volunteers grow but I have not put out a single plant that is not grafted. I may in the fall as fusarium is not as huge a problem then due to the very dry weather we usually have from June though December.

I admire your desire to stay totally organic and in the nice California climate you might be able to pull it off. I tried it for a couple of years but due to our incredibly high humidity and proximity to commercial tomato farms it was just not feasible. I could get some tomatoes before the plants died but could get no extended production out of plants before foliage diseases wiped them out. Controlling pests organically was much easier than controlling foliage diseases. With organic methods I have virtually eliminated the terrible infestation of tomato root knot nematodes and have even kept the nematodes that kill my okra and cucumbers under good control. Getting nematodes under control greatly reduced my incidence of heavy spider mite infestations. I'm hoping the grafts will help with my dreadful fusarium problem. I feel like getting those two soil borne problems under control will also reduce plant diseases and pests because sickly plants just fall prey to them more often.

I started more grafts onto the suckers I started with Amelia and Multifort. I hope my luck improves because I really want to get more grafts with these rootstocks into the garden to see how they perform compared to the others I am using.

My best friend got into wine making a few years ago and is producing some of the finest wines I've ever tasted. Only problem is it has like tomato growing become an obsession that keeps him constantly working on improving his product. He's in deep now with fishing, gardening and wine making.

Bill

[b54red]

Originally Posted by beeman

There is a very good video on suckering, pruning, stringing etc at the bottom of this page, best I have seen in a long time.
http://betterheirlooms.com/blog/

Beeman, that is the best video I have seen on pruning to a single stem. That should be a big help to anyone who wants to try growing single stem plants.

Bill

[DavidP]

Originally Posted by b54red

David I have never grown Red Brandywine but if it has the same kind of growth pattern as Brandywine Sudduth's then I would not recommend going with a single stem on it. If on the other hand it is has very dense foliage then it will probably do fine with a single stem. Since you are growing it in a cage I would probably go with two stems unless it is a very narrow cage. If you don't have much experience with pruning I think you might be better off starting with keeping several of your plants to two stems first before venturing into the extreme pruning required to have just a single stem. That would give you a good chance to practice with your pruning and also reduce the risk of your plants not having enough foliage to protect the tomatoes from too much sun. I see no advantage to using cages for single stem plants. One good sturdy very tall stake would be better or a trellis like I use.

If you do decide to go with a plant as a single stem then I would recommend trying it first with your Cherokee Purple. It did fantastic for me last year as a single stem plant. As a matter of fact it produced more pounds of tomatoes than any Cherokee Purple I have ever grown; but not because of more fruit but the size of the fruits was larger overall and more fruits set per truss. I don't know if it would do that every time but it was amazing to me. I just set out my first CP for the year yesterday and it is a graft onto an Amelia rootstock and I will try it as a single stem hopefully. I finally got a couple of my grafts onto Amelia and Multifort into the garden yesterday and am looking forward to seeing how they grow once in the ground.

Remember when doing this pruning it is much better to remove the suckers when small and if the stem forks wait until one side of the fork produces a blossom truss then remove the other one. Remember to keep checking lower down on the plant for new suckers even if they have been removed they will sometimes still send out new ones that you have to keep removing. If you go with a single stem you have to be very careful not to cut or break the stems growth tip or you will have to wait a long time for a new sucker to form to get the plant back growing again. That is another good reason I think you should start with at least two stems for your first time trying the pruning. If you find that two is too much you can always pinch off the growth tip on the weaker stem and stop it from growing any more.

Bill

Thanks very much for the advice, I hadn't thought of taking into account variety in deciding how to prune but definitely makes sense. Most of my plants are growing single stem this year but I am worried about sunscald and have planted them fairly close together, 18 inches in 4 ft wide beds with the hope that I can get some shading. However several are at 5 ft tall already and its only mid May. Our first frost date is something like mid Dec if you can call it frost, so I might allow some suckers to grow out to get the plants bushier at height to both give some shade and also to stop them getting beyond my reach. I've also got plants growing American style in cages and up 6 ft concrete reinforcing wire trellises. The grafted ones I have just single stem or caged American style.
Just experimenting, I've gardened in England more and there tomatoes are always single stemmed and outside prone to blight late in the season and are really more a greenhouse crop. Thats where i first got the idea of grafting as i visited a local tomato greenhouse which was a large commercial operation with about 20 acres under glass. all grafted plants grown in rockwool and grown to ridiculous heights and meticulously pruned of even lower branches as they grew, they were growing to about 30 ft long, which was accomplished by regularly dropping plants and laying the defoliated stems along the row and then stringing them up further down, repeated thru the season. Picking etc was accomplished by a hydraulic lift platform that ran on rails down each row.

[aclum]

Hi Naysen and others,

So far, I can't tell much difference between the grafted and non-grafted plants. Like David (I think) said, the grafts (which started out smaller) are finally catching up to the ungrafted versions and they all pretty much look the same right now.

I do have my first tomato (ungrafted) with a blush - Indian Stripe and I'm posting a photo of that as well as a sort of unusual graft (small because it was sort of an afterthought and done late in the game) of a KBX grafted onto a Ping Tung Eggplant rootstock. Instead of trimming the growth coming from the rootstock, I decided to leave it, so should end up with a KBX coming out of a base of eggplants!

Will post some photos of my whole garden soon (probably in the photo forum). Everything's going great and I'm going to have to figure out exactly how I'll deal with them when they reach my top trellis top bars (which will be happening soon at the rate they're growing!).

Oh, I made a little chart and copied it for recording data on the tomatoes in the garden. At the moment I have approx 325 green tomatoes (on 58 plants)!! Knowing this makes it alot easier to prune with abandon <g> as we're likely to have more tomatoes than we know what to do with (knock on wood!!). I have tossed about 10 tomatoes due to BER.

(Also posted some photos on the Noire de Crimee thread, if anyone's interested).

Anne

[z_willus_d]

Anne, thanks for posting your pics. 325 (non-cherry?) green tomatoes is superb. I have around 58 plants as well, but I'd guess I have 1/5 the tomatoes you have, and so far none seem close to blush. I thought you planted out about the same time as I did, so you're well ahead of the game right now. I bet those IS taste great. And that KBX is bizarre. I wonder how it will taste and compare to the others.

In my garden, the branches continue to drop on my ungrafted varieties (fungal issues), and now one or two of the grafted (to a much lesser extent so far). Thrips continue to be a problem despite all the countless spraying. I weed whacked my hillside, so they have no where to go but in my plants. Which seems fine assuming the sprays take them out, but no joy. Well, despite all those woes, I think I'm sitting alright for the moment. I've started to harvest sungold cherries and a few blueberries from the bushes. Peppers are coming fast and tasting good as well. Let us know when you create your pic post.
Thanks,
-naysen

[b54red]

I can state as a fact that I am having more bountiful fruit set than ever before with my grafted plants. I don't know whether it is the grafted plants or the Texas Tomato Food that I have been giving them every 7 to 10 days. Worms started hitting my plants on Friday and it has been rainy today so hopefully I will get to spray for them tomorrow. I have kept up my Daconil regime and have not had too many issues with diseases yet except for the 10 wet days in a row we had caused some fungal problems. A mild bleach spray fixed those problems and I'm back to weekly Daconil spraying now that the weather is more normal. The only real problem I have had is the continued iron deficiency showing up on some of my plants. I supplemented today and hope it helps those plants. Despite the iron deficiency even those plants have a fairly good fruit set. The biggest surprise for me is the good fruit set on Donskoi and Delicious. I have never had a very good fruit set on either of those and both of my Sudduth's grafts are setting better than ever. Now if all those fruit will just stay on the vines and grow up to be nice ripe tomatoes without some calamity hitting them I'll be very happy.

Bill

[mrbalfour]

Here is a picture of RST-04-105-T F1 tomato plant, which I have used for my rootstock. I have grown a couple of the rootstock plants so that I can get some future seed. Hopefully there will not be a big difference amongst the seed. I just thought the plant was interesting how tall it is and it is only May. Also the lower leaves just keep dying and so the plant looks like a tall vine. The tomatoes look about the size of a cherry tomato but none have matured yet.

[Delerium]

Here is the update on my newly sprouted grafting rootstock seeds. Maxifort f1 first, Multifort 2nd and Beaufort was last to germinate. All germinated within 4 days.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by mrbalfour

Here is a picture of RST-04-105-T F1 tomato plant, which I have used for my rootstock. I have grown a couple of the rootstock plants so that I can get some future seed. Hopefully there will not be a big difference amongst the seed. I just thought the plant was interesting how tall it is and it is only May. Also the lower leaves just keep dying and so the plant looks like a tall vine. The tomatoes look about the size of a cherry tomato but none have matured yet.

I hate to say this but that plant looks almost like it has some fusarium issues. Maybe it is just Early Blight killing off your lower leaves. Are you keeping it sprayed with a preventative fungicide?

Bill

[mrbalfour]

No I am not spraying the plant since none of my other tomato plants seem to be having a problem. I thought some disease may be going on but it does not seem to be affecting the grafted tomatoes on this rootstock that are in the garden. Hopefully I will not end up infecting my other tomatoes.

[beeman]

Originally Posted by b54red

I hate to say this but that plant looks almost like it has some fusarium issues. Maybe it is just Early Blight killing off your lower leaves. Are you keeping it sprayed with a preventative fungicide?Bill

Isn't the idea of using these root stocks to prevent the use of sprays. These plants are supposed to be immune to early blight etc?

[b54red]

Originally Posted by beeman

Isn't the idea of using these root stocks to prevent the use of sprays. These plants are supposed to be immune to early blight etc?

That particular rootstock is resistant to two of the three races of fusarium. Even being resistant is no guarantee that the plants won't eventually come down with it if there is heavy infestation in the soil. I know because even the most resistant hybrids usually come down with fusarium in my garden but it takes much longer and I am able to get a lot more production from them. Sometimes they last the whole season as do occasionally a few heirlooms.

I don't believe there are any plants that are resistant to foliage diseases like Early Blight but some do tend not to get it as bad as others so I suppose there must be some resistance. The purpose of using resistant rootstock for grafting is to help against soil borne problems like fusarium, bacterial wilt, verticullum, and nematodes. So far this season I have seen no signs of fusarium on any of the grafted plants in my garden but it is still early.

Bill