grafting for the home grower- Celebrity F1 for rootsock?

[kerns125]

Hi, all --
I've had great but very limited experience w/ grafted tomatoes. In 2013 I grafted onto Maxifort rootstock and then grew the grafted plants side-by-side next to the original heirloom, and weighed the produce to compare. Here were my results:

Cherokee Purple: 9.11 lbs
Cherokee Purple graft: 26.9 lbs
(Both plants looked healthy into October)

Red Brandywine: 4.98 lbs (then succumbed to blight Aug 10)
Red Brandywine graft: 26.22 lbs (last harvest Oct 8)

I know that my biggest battle so far in Alexandria has been late blight, and that theoretically the grafts shouldn't make much of a difference with foliar diseases, but I am guessing that the strong roots just helped with overall vigor and therefore production. So I'd like to return to grafting again this year, but the darn Maxifort seeds are really expensive. I have some left that I'll sow this spring, but has anyone here used Celebrity F1 seeds as rootstock? How were your results?

Thanks!
Jen

[Fred Hempel]

Those are really amazing results! They seem to suggest that the Maxifort rootstock is well worth the purchase price.

[Gardeneer]

Hi Jen .
After reading your post in the other site , I started a thread here , named

"Grafting As A Vehicle To Improve Productivity"

But I did not see much encouragement on the subject.
At the time I did not want to make reference to your experiment, because I wanted others comments not to be influenced.

Now I am glad you are here and presenting your own results.

[Cole_Robbie]

I agree, impressive results, but Cherokee Purple should yield 30 pounds or more in good soil with no graft.

[carolyn137]

Jen, I did see you other thread at the other place but did notres[pndsinceIseldomgothere expectwhenI get anotice that someone haspostedinathread thatIdid when I was still there and if theissueinterestsme,I willusually respnd.And when Gardeneer posted here about grafting in the following thread

http://tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=39036

I asked him to pass the info on to you, I don't know if he did. And that b'c I referred to Dr. Davis Francis who used Celebrity F1 as root stock in a huge trial involving many different root stocks and also gave a link to that LOG place that supplied the grafted tomatoes to Territorial Seeds when they started selling same with very mixed results from those who grew them and was the only place I'd seen that claimed much higher production, and I know Worth commented on that here at Tville as well as many others.

Root stock , I should make that plural since it's not just Maxifort and Beaufort , it's all the new ones developed by the Japanese that are sold now.

And IMO it isn't just rootstock that's important it's where someone gardens and the weather in any one year and what else is important is that so many think that growing grafted plants will decrease tomato diseases, Yes, some increased tolerance, not resistence to some soil borne diseases, but what they don't seem to realize is that THE most common tomato diseases worlwide are the foliage diseases, the four most common being

Early Blight, fungal
Septoria Leaf Spot, ditto
Bacterial Speck
Bacterial Spot

And grafting has nothing to do with those foliage diseaes.

Late Blight is a different story, can be seen early OR Late in the season, is not a foliage disease, it's a systemic diseases , different fungus pathogen than Early Blight and after the first symptoms appear, which means bending down of the petioles and the grey blotches on the leaves the plants can be a pile of stinking black within a week or so,

Carolyn

[kerns125]

Gardeneer, so sorry I missed that thread! I've been swamped at work and my tomato obsession is suffering. I'll look for it, read through, and comment!

Obviously my N of two does not a great controlled experiment make, but my limited results were dramatic enough to convince me to try again. I had the plants in a raised garden with 8+ hours of sun, new commercially-bought garden soil and Tomato Tone added at transplant and every 2 weeks, so it should've been decent enough soil. This year my CP plant produced next to nothing in an earthbox (maybe 6 tomatoes if I was lucky) when many other plants (ie PBTD, green zebra, etc) thrived, so I'm surprised to hear that CP should be generally productive. Maybe I should get a new strain to try, Cole?

In any case, back to the rootstock. I watched a long lecture on YouTube by a professor at Kansas State who discussed using Celebrity rootstock (https://youtu.be/od3nu7o-0cg) so I was wondering whether anyone had tried using a hybrid w/ good disease resistance like this. Maybe I'll stick with Maxifort this year, and if I get consistently better yields again, then next year I can compare Celebrity with Maxifort....

[kerns125]

Carolyn, thanks for the extra insight -- I'll have to look into it more, especially Dr. Francis' trial. I have early AND late blight, but the early blight always seems to be simply a nuisance, while the late blight kicks my butt. I lost my ungrafted BW red to late blight that year while the graft was the last healthy plant standing into October, so I thought maybe the vigor helped it battle the blight. But again, such a tiny uncontrolled trial is obviously not good evidence for anything!

[Gardeneer]

Hi Jen,

I started the thread here after reading your post in the other site. BUT I did not want to bring up because I wanted to get a fresh unbiased discussion and did not have a reason to inform you about it.
Generally, all the Youtube videos that I have seen, advocate grafting for soil borne disease management. Obviously blights or any foliage disease cannot be avoided/prevented by grafting.

On the Cherokee Purple, my 4 years of growing it tells me that it is a below par producer. And I have read a lot of gardeners to share that view. The reason for its popularity is due to its unique taste that is liked. So in that note I thing what you have achieved is remarkable. This is of worth mentioning that you have done it in he same place, climate and year, side by side.
Your Brandywine result is equally outstanding.

On MAXIFORT seeds, you are right they are very expensive. The cheapest one I have seen is like 30 bucks for 100 seed.

Gardeneer

[carolyn137]

I couldn't find a post I did for you Jen but found it in the other grafting thread and it's getting pretty mixed up now with two similar threads.

Here's what I wrote.

(Jen, please look at post #3 in this thread where I spoke to your results, noted the work of David Francis with different rootstocks, linked to that LOG place and asked him to pass that info to you at the H place.

I just got another H notice and saw that he didn't do that.)

Carolyn

[Ricky Shaw]

Forty pounds extra of heirloom tomatoes for three dollars of Maxifort.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Ricky Shaw

Forty pounds extra of heirloom tomatoes for three dollars of Maxifort.

Add in time spent grafting and probable loss if new to grafting, and then what is the cost in time spent and then perhaps using a small pack of Celebrity F1 seeds from Pinetree would help a bit, but then wondering how they might do in Broomfield which I know very well from the years I spent in Denver.

Carolyn

[Ricky Shaw]

Grafting is beyond my skill level, as is disease treatment. My approach is to plant a lot of things and hope enough survive to make it worth my time.

Now in this case, were it mostly about the gardener's time spent. I'd for sure go with the Maxifort based on a successful history.

[Gardeneer]

The actual grafting mechanism/technique is simple, if you compare it, eg, to crossing tomatoes.
Also, in crossing process there is no guarantee for success and actually the resulu might be a total failure. But gardeners and breeders do it. One of its purposes can be to improve productivity.
But then in every thing there is a learning curve. Nothing can be mastered overnight.
Whether or not one wants/chooses to pursue it , it is another matter.

Gardeneer

[b54red]

I have been using grafted plants only for several years and my results on productivity have been so mixed as to production that I am reluctant to recommend it as a vehicle for that purpose alone. I have had some major improvements in production with certain root-stocks grafted with certain scions. I have also had decreases in production and size of fruit with certain combinations.

I have only used a few Maxifort root-stock because it only is resistant to two types of fusarium and that is usually not enough in my garden. I must say that on one graft this past year where I used it with a scion of Indian Stripe PL the plant was far more vigorous and larger than normal with better fruit production and size. The only other root-stock that gave me greater production with Indian Stripe PL was RST-04-106-T over the past few years. Another real benefit of the RST-04-106-T was an absence of Bacterial Wilt killing off any of the plants with this root-stock. This is the first variety of root-stock that had no cases of BW but maybe it was just luck. I will be planting more of them this year and see if this resistance is real or not.

I did not find any consistent significant improvement in production with any of the many substitute root-stock varieties that were tried in order to not pay the high prices for the true root-stock only varieties. I tried Big Beef, Amelia, BHN-640, Floralina, Tasti-Lee, Charger, Crista and Red Mountain. The results over two years of using them caused me to drop them because of better results overall with Multifort, Estamino, and RST-04-106-T. I did have a few instances where production was better but usually it was accompanied by smaller sized fruit and in a few cases much smaller size fruit. I did have a few combinations that did significantly better but these results did not reappear the next year with those combinations but I did get repeated increases year after year with some of my combinations with the true root-stock seed. Because of that I will only be using them like I did last year despite the exorbitant price of some of the seed.

Below is a list of root-stock and scions that have had repeated success over at least two years and sometimes three. Despite these successes I cannot guarantee that these results will happen this year with these combinations.

Multifort+ Brandywine Sudduth's and Cowlick's, Pruden's Purple, Neves Azorean Red,Limbaugh's Legacy, Marianna's Peace, Donskoi, Red Brandywine (TGS), and KBX

Estamino+ Indian Stripe, Neves Azorean Red, Limbaugh's Legacy, Giant Belgium, Brandywine Sudduth's and Cowlick's, Couilles de Taureau, Red Brandywine, JD's Special C Tex and Spudakee

RST-04-106-T+ Indian Stripe PL, Virginia Sweet, Pruden's Purple, Giant Belgium, Delicious, Zogola

Crista+ Virginia Sweet, Couilles de Taureau, Tarasenko-6

Red Mountain+ Berkley Tie Dye Pink, Neves Azorean Red

Amelia+ German Johnson

BHN 640+ JD's Special C Tex

Tasti-Lee+ German Johnson, Donskoi

If my grafting is successful this year I will again be planting only grafted plants so I may get some more results that will be helpful. Despite the improvements with some varieties I still think it would be easier to increase production by just planting more plants unless you are fighting soil diseases as I am. There are a few exceptional examples of increased production but only with a limited number of plants and with a limited number of years so even these could be flukes. As can be seen by my list above I had very few examples of increases using the regular disease resistant hybrid varieties as root-stock and most that I tried had no increases to report. I am also pretty sure that the increases in production on some of the above examples is due mostly to increased health and vigor of the plant from more resistance to soil diseases.

Bill

[Gardeneer]

I still think it would be easier to increase production by just planting more plants

Yes, that is another way. But when you don't have enough garden space and want to optimize your returns you would want to grow more productive plants that you like. That is my case.

Of course there are other factors that can improve productivity that one can do : For example, feeding, supporting, disease management ...

Gardeneer