Anne's New Grafting Chamber 9-12-13

[aclum]

Hi Everyone (esp. my fellow grafters),

First of all, I'd like to refer you back to Delerium's thread mentioning his new system for creating humidity in his grafting healing chamber using a piezoelectric transducer Humidifier (THINK it was in his thread on a triple variety graft in the photo section). That discussion plus finally looking at the entirety of this 57 minute grafting lecture from youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od3nu7o-0cg

which emphasized the importance of humitidy in the healing chamber, inspired me to try using a medical nebulizer (used to vaporize medications) again. I had tried this before with poor results, but I think the poor results were caused by other factors.

Right now I'm using some of my remaining cuttings and plants from the garden for some experimental grafts, and I needed a tall chamber. (My usual tall chamber is already occupied). The normal humidity dome and tray set up wasn't tall enough, but I had two of them not being used, so I just hinged the two domes together with clear packaging tape, and put them in a seed tray for stability. I put a piece of heavy plastic cutting board material I had lying around on the bottom to weigh down the whole thing for additional stability as well as to provide a level surface for the plants. Once everything was set up, I did some grafts. Here are the descriptions of the attached photos:

Healing chamber with top portion (lid) swung open. The humidity dome has two two-hole vents at the top. One is covered with the standard cover. The other has a temp probe inserted through a rubber stopper that's them placed in one of the holes. The other hole has a stopper securing (but not pinching) the air tube from the nebulizer pump to the nebulizer reservoir filled with water

The next photo shows a detail of the nebulizer reservoir.

Then, a photo of the chamber "pre-fogged." For this, I take about a cup of water from our instant hot water heater and place it in the chamber. It fogs up the whole chamber in a matter of minutes. It also raises the temp inside to about 92. Doing this prior to grafting, gets things ready and by the time the grafts go in, the chamber has usually cooled down to about 80 degrees. (If not, I'll vent the chamber a bit to cool it down)

At bit out of order, but a photo of the chamber pre-fog

Finally a photo with the healing chamber opened and showing my new grafts and the nebulizer fogging away ! The grafts are Santa Clara Canner and Brandywine OTV on NAR as a rootstock (NOT rootless) and Antigua Eggplant and D'Espelette (I think) pepper on Goose Creek rootstock (NOT rootless).

NOTE: I did some grafts a few days ago that were no root, and they're not looking real great at the moment, so I decided to go with the roots this time.

The nebulizer only holds about 25 minutes worth of water. I've been running it for 10 to 15 minutes every couple of hours and no signs of any wilting at all yet (although it's only be about 10 hours since I grafted them).

I think the nebulizers reservoirs can be run off of regular aquarium pumps. They're really cheap (a couple of $$ on amazon - undoubtedly more at medical supply stores).

If I were totally starting from scratch, I don't know if I'd go this route (would probably just get a large clear plastic storage container and an inexpensive cool mist atomizer), but thought some of you might be interested in this is you have the "makings" lying around or easy to come by!

Anne

[z_willus_d]

That's an impressive rig you've built Anne! I look forward to following your results. Maybe you should start a web business selling those as kits... I will not charge for the idea.

My getupandgo it a bit low right now for grafting, after a season that was again plagued by Fusarium and Verticillium. I'll be trying grafting again next season, but I plan to move away from the Maxifort/Beaufort rootstocks and try others like Multifort or maybe that RS one you've been experimenting with. I'm surprised my F./V. pressures are so intense as to even overwhelm the touted "Forts."

Good luck with the new contraption. I like it.
-naysen

[aclum]

Hi Naysen,

Glad you like my set-up. I've already improved upon the design (I think). So it's still evolving and not yet marketable !
The first batch of 2 grafts seem to have done fine (except for the pepper graft that I apparently didn't get a good match on and it just fell out of the clip!) and have moved things on to the second low-light chamber. I've got some new pepper on tomato grafts going in the new chamber now.

Yeah, I know about all your problems with F, V, and whatnot. I really feel for you and admire your patience in getting to the root of things (no pun intended). The youtube link above actually had a lot of quite interesting comments about various rootstocks and diseases that I hadn't known about or had forgotten. The same guy (Cary Revalt??) also has another youtube video 75 minutes long that repeats a lot of the first video, but has a few more tid-bits here and there. In one of the videos he was talking about the various V races and how hard some are to eliminate, but found in his studies that grafted tomatoes, even though stricken by V to some degree equaled the production of the ungrafted tomatoes WITHOUT the disease. Also how a rootstock might be effective against a certain pathogen in one part of the country but not another. You've probably already seen the videos, but it might be worthwhile giving them another look if you have the time. It might have more relevance now that you're dealing with your current problems.

I've been following your soil saga with great interest. Fingers crossed that your current experiment works!!

Anne

[Doug9345]

This looks interesting. I wondered about using a nebulizer to create humidity. How have your grafts made out so far?

[Delerium]

Hey Hey what's happening? My grafting friends on Tomatoville have been quiet and its making me sad . Are you all angry with me or something lol! So Anne just a little heads up - i planted all my tomato varieties i want to grow for next year and will be playing with grafting again soon. It's really exciting i can't wait for 2014. By the way the National Heirloom Expo was Awesome! I wonder who else from tomatoville was there.

[Delerium]

Not to hijack your thread but here are some of the varieties I am growing now so i can start getting samples from them to play with combinations.

[aclum]

Hi Doug and Delerium,

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you! (Computer problems &(&*(&).

I think the jury is still out on my nebulizer set up. Basically, none of my pepper graft attempts have worked. Had one small batch where the tomatoes on tomatoes definitely took, but I think I took them out of the chamber too soon and they had wilted beyond help before I really noticed and tried to take some action . A couple of the grafts didn't have good matches or got knocked out of place somehow. I'm way out of practice, working with older, hardened tomatoes from the garden, or shadehouse and having a bit of trouble with the new clips I have. And some of the grafts were no root, which I haven't quite mastered yet. Plus I think I got a bit carried away and opened the chamber to give the grafts some "fresh air" far too frequently. (I, know, excuses.....excuses!)

I DO think the nebulizer set up will work out fine, once I get my act together and perhaps have some better plants or seedlings to work with. (I seem to do MUCH better with the smaller seedlings). This morning I took a beautiful branch I'd pruned from one of my fall tomatoes and tried a no root self-graft with that. I'll report back on the outcome of this one. At least I know I got a good match on the grafting cut and no compatibility issues!

BTW, I looked up the users manual for my nebulizer compressor (Phillips Respironics Option-Home Nebulizer) and see in the specs that the psi is between 16 and 33 psi and the lpm (liters per minute) ranges between 4 and 7. Don't know what mine is exactly as it when to the max of my little in-line flow meter that only goes to 4.5. Anyway, I'm thinking an average aquarium pump might not be powerful enough to work with a regular nebulizer reservoir.

Nice looking plants, Delerium!! Many greenies on your branch grafts that had blossoms a while ago? I'm starting to get a new flush of blossoms now. Looks like the really hot weather is finally about over for the year.

That's great about the tomato festival - you ought to start a thread on it. I see that there's going to be a tomato festival in Los Banos the first part of October (don't know the exact dates).

Yes, I've missed the posts from the grafters too! But I imagine things will be picking up in a couple of months as people get ready for next season.

Guess that's about all for now. I'll be posting more photos of my fall garden soon. I've just begun pruning and trellising some of the larger plants.

Anne

[livinonfaith]

That is a really nice setup Anne! It might not work for me simply because I would forget to turn it on and off.

Planning on trying the grafting again next year, too. But it has become clear that my seedlings need more light. They were way too tall and leggy. So a nice plant light might be my next purchase. And maybe then a humidifier of some sort. Always wanting something new!