Best grafted tomato varieties?

aclum · February 8, 2013

Hi everyone,

Naysen, thanks for posting the article. I've read it a few times before (along with a number of other article, videos, etc. - often a bit contradictory), but it has more meaning after actually trying some grafts and it was good to re-read it again!

My conclusions are that many of these articles make certain assumptions (or I assume things incorrectly) that are not true in all circumstances or that can be misinterpreted. For example when I first read the article you posted when it said direct sunlight and used the black plastic in their healing chamber, I assumed that it meant basically no exposure to light at all (as opposed to just sunlight). But after Marla's comments and reading the PDF at Johnny's, I realized that artificial lights or diffused sunlight were OK and it was just direct light from the sun that was so bad. When I first posted my problems with grafting on another thread, several people suggested my problem was the complete darkness for 3 days that I had my grafts in.

Also, first time around I was using a technique from a blog from a place called growing together (I posted the link to the blog entry). They mentioned giving the rootstocks a good watering the day before grafting. I did this with my plants and it was not a good thing!! I'm thinking now, that perhaps they had been using a very quick draining potting medium whereas I was using a miracle grow moisture control seed starting mix. So the watering instructions didn't really apply in my case.

And, I was confused by the whole humidity thing. No matter what I did, my guage never went over 80% - even with fogging from a nebulizer plus spraying the sides of the dome and leaving an open container of water in the tray. I read some things on the web saying that an open pan of water inside the closed chamber was enough to maintain 100% humidity, to others saying use a cool mist humidifier. I finally concluded that as long as I has a good deal of condensation on the inside of the dome, things were humid enough.

I believe my failures were principally due to poor water and humidity management and most of my faitures keeled over with wilt fairly quickly after doing the graft.

My first successes came (as I described in an earlier post) came when I started providing the grafting chamber with more light (subdued room light and a mesh shade screen, stopped looking at the plants constantly and opening the cover thus interupting the constant temp and humidity, and cut way back on any misting. As I said, of the 9 plants in this batch, I had 6 survivors. 2 of them subsequently died, but I've got 4 that made it through and are looking good under the lights with my other plants.

The next attempt - using 6 plants - I didn't water the night before, but as I was doing the grafts, the rootstock seemed a bit too dry so I gave each a tiny sip of water. In retrospect, this was a big mistake and all but 2 of my plants wilted in short order. This is exactly what someone earlier mentioned about the problems with too much moisture in the rootstock interfering with the graft. The 2 survivors are in the second chamber now and acclimating to normal conditions.

My lastest trial involved a surplus of very good looking Prue seedlings that I didn't really need (already had my control and back-up plants and the remainder were too large to match with the new rootstock seeds I was starting). I decided to take 4 of them and graft onto them some scions from surplus plants of other varieties. So, just sort of out of curiosity, I grafted them as they were (fairly dry) and just misted the sides of the domes (not the plants themselves) and stuck them in the healing chamber, with just the rubberized mesh shelf liner shading material over the dome and any direct sunlight from the windows blocked off. All 4 survived. They never wilted and after just 2 nights were moved to the second chamber. The second chamber was misted, but now is fairly dry in room light with the vents on the dome to be opened today.

In conclusion, at least in my experience, there are so many variables that one can't always follow the "published instructions" and expect automatic success but has to take their own conditions into account (soil used, location of chamber - greenhouse vs. indoors, etc.) and the major problem as someone stated about is having too much moisture in the plant itself at the time of grafting.

So, that's my experience to date ..... hope it's somewhat helpful.

Anne

February 8, 2013	#11
aclum Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Merced, CA Posts: 832	Hi everyone, Naysen, thanks for posting the article. I've read it a few times before (along with a number of other article, videos, etc. - often a bit contradictory), but it has more meaning after actually trying some grafts and it was good to re-read it again! My conclusions are that many of these articles make certain assumptions (or I assume things incorrectly) that are not true in all circumstances or that can be misinterpreted. For example when I first read the article you posted when it said direct sunlight and used the black plastic in their healing chamber, I assumed that it meant basically no exposure to light at all (as opposed to just sunlight). But after Marla's comments and reading the PDF at Johnny's, I realized that artificial lights or diffused sunlight were OK and it was just direct light from the sun that was so bad. When I first posted my problems with grafting on another thread, several people suggested my problem was the complete darkness for 3 days that I had my grafts in. Also, first time around I was using a technique from a blog from a place called growing together (I posted the link to the blog entry). They mentioned giving the rootstocks a good watering the day before grafting. I did this with my plants and it was not a good thing!! I'm thinking now, that perhaps they had been using a very quick draining potting medium whereas I was using a miracle grow moisture control seed starting mix. So the watering instructions didn't really apply in my case. And, I was confused by the whole humidity thing. No matter what I did, my guage never went over 80% - even with fogging from a nebulizer plus spraying the sides of the dome and leaving an open container of water in the tray. I read some things on the web saying that an open pan of water inside the closed chamber was enough to maintain 100% humidity, to others saying use a cool mist humidifier. I finally concluded that as long as I has a good deal of condensation on the inside of the dome, things were humid enough. I believe my failures were principally due to poor water and humidity management and most of my faitures keeled over with wilt fairly quickly after doing the graft. My first successes came (as I described in an earlier post) came when I started providing the grafting chamber with more light (subdued room light and a mesh shade screen, stopped looking at the plants constantly and opening the cover thus interupting the constant temp and humidity, and cut way back on any misting. As I said, of the 9 plants in this batch, I had 6 survivors. 2 of them subsequently died, but I've got 4 that made it through and are looking good under the lights with my other plants. The next attempt - using 6 plants - I didn't water the night before, but as I was doing the grafts, the rootstock seemed a bit too dry so I gave each a tiny sip of water. In retrospect, this was a big mistake and all but 2 of my plants wilted in short order. This is exactly what someone earlier mentioned about the problems with too much moisture in the rootstock interfering with the graft. The 2 survivors are in the second chamber now and acclimating to normal conditions. My lastest trial involved a surplus of very good looking Prue seedlings that I didn't really need (already had my control and back-up plants and the remainder were too large to match with the new rootstock seeds I was starting). I decided to take 4 of them and graft onto them some scions from surplus plants of other varieties. So, just sort of out of curiosity, I grafted them as they were (fairly dry) and just misted the sides of the domes (not the plants themselves) and stuck them in the healing chamber, with just the rubberized mesh shelf liner shading material over the dome and any direct sunlight from the windows blocked off. All 4 survived. They never wilted and after just 2 nights were moved to the second chamber. The second chamber was misted, but now is fairly dry in room light with the vents on the dome to be opened today. In conclusion, at least in my experience, there are so many variables that one can't always follow the "published instructions" and expect automatic success but has to take their own conditions into account (soil used, location of chamber - greenhouse vs. indoors, etc.) and the major problem as someone stated about is having too much moisture in the plant itself at the time of grafting. So, that's my experience to date ..... hope it's somewhat helpful. Anne