Best grafted tomato varieties?

[JamesL]

Yes, definitive results seem to be difficult to come by. Lots of proven success with trees, cacti, etc. With tomatoes, I have found a fair amount of discussion on the subject, more than a few people indicating they would try it and essentially zero follow up with results.
One reliable result - a T'ville member reported successfully grafting a Delicious sucker onto a Multifort using glue.
I did way to much reading on cyanoacrylate this winter. Won't bother going into it here as it will be irrelevant unless I (or anyone) can report at least some success with the method.
As to the video, for those of you who haven't seen it, you can see it at the link below in addition to on youtube.
http://oardc.osu.edu/graftingtomato/graft.htm


PS- I also sent an email to the contact at OSU to inquire.

Edit 3.6.13 - the video - certainly not a joke or a hoax.
I traded emails with OSU and received permission to share the info. I also extended an invitation to join us.
I asked the following:
I wanted to inquire about your use of cyanoacrylate glue with respect to tomato grafting as referenced on your website.
http://oardc.osu.edu/graftingtomato/...ods/index.html
Specifically 3 questions:
1. What was your success rate with glue grafting vs the use of grafting clips?
2. What type of cyanoacrylate was used?
3. Which method was the most successful? Cleft, tube or glue?

Answer -
For top grafting/tube grafting (both scion and RS cut with a 30 degree angle) We get higher % graft success using cyanoacrylate glue. Our glue of choice is "Krazy Glue", and we prefer the applicator that comes with its own brush.
We have not done side to side comparisons with cleft grafting and glue-based top grafting. My sense is that cleft grafting gives us higher take. Several of the RS we work with have "incompatibility" issues, and we use glue to raise success to an acceptable level. For example, the bacterial wilt resistant line Hawaii 7998 and hybrids with this line give us poor success with both cleft graft and tube grafting. We can raise this to ~70% or greater with glue.

Videos demonstrating our methods are available at: http://www.youtube.com/user/TomatoLab
With glue grafting, you must be very careful not to get glue on the surface you are trying to join. The glue goes around the outside.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by livinonfaith

Okay, I'm the one who started this thread and still have yet to graft the first plant!
I finally pulled the trays out to graft last weekend and realized that roots were streaming out of the bottom of the cells into the water. The cells had to be cut in half in order to get them out without damaging the roots. Also, as others have noted, they were just really unstable in the DE, kind of flopping around.

I re-potted them deeper in larger containers, (still in the DE) but figured they probably need a couple of days to let them settle in their new environments.

Maybe some day I'll get around to grafting these little guys!

Whatever you do, don't leave them in that damp healing chamber for too long. I think the Captan applied to the surface made a real difference in the number of failures due to damping off. I have heard that the Captan once wet is only effective for about a day so. I think since the weather turned cold and they were healing so slow I would have been aided if I had sprinkled a little on the soil around the base of the rootstock every few days. Some were in the chamber for 8 days with only very infrequent opening due to the cold.

I think using the clear plastic healing boxes and covering the sides so a bit of indirect light can come in the top from the very beginning is helpful. I also used a couple of totally dark containers but the results were not as good in them.

After looking at most of the failed grafts over the last few weeks it seemed that the highest success rate was achieved when grafting a very short piece of scion. I ended up grafting as high as 7 inches or so above the soil line and many were successful. It seemed that the grafts with the really tall scion fared worse overall. The least successful were the ones with a long section of rootstock and a long scion. It could have just been luck but that has been my experience so far. You really don't have a lot of choice about where you graft most of the time because of the differences in stem sizes with many of the plants.

I also had a higher percentage of successful grafts with the 2.5 and 3 mm clips than with the smaller 2mm clips. That could have just been poor handling on my part. I found it much more difficult to match up and join the very small stems most of the time.

I noticed that watering the scions the day before planting seemed to be helpful but that the rootstocks grafted better when the soil was a bit less wet and this also helps with decreasing damping off.

I had some with a lot of foliage on top do fine and others with almost all the growth cut off do fine and vise versa. I did cut off extra foliage on the scions at least 24 hrs before grafting so they could heal up a bit before being stressed with the grafting. I believe I had slightly better luck with the scions that had very little foliage but it was really hard to tell with the failures since all the scion top growth just wilted to next to nothing.

Using just DE would help with the damping off issue but would bring a couple of different problems. I think if you kept them bottom watered there would just be too much moisture in the rootstock for the graft to take well. The trouble with watering young plants in DE is that it is very difficult not to over water for grafting and when DE dries out it really dries out. With potting soil it is easy enough to dribble a little water into each cup from the top without over watering.

Another problem with just using DE is the lack of support it provides young seedlings when it starts to dry out and young seedlings are what is best for grafting. After grafting the plants will frequently start to droop a bit and with the added weight of the little clip I found the DE just let most of them fall over. I ended up trying toothpicks to hold them upright and it worked on a few but most just kept slipping over. Hopefully I will never have to leave plants in a closed healing chamber for a full week or more again so I think the potting soil and a bit of Captan should take care of most of the damping off problems.

My first three batches of grafted plants spent the whole day outside being buffeted by high winds and they all looked okay when I brought them back into the greenhouse because 30s are expected the next few nights.

My new rootstock seed and scion seed are starting to emerge finally. I am anxious for them to get large enough to start grafting again with warmer conditions.

Good luck everyone with your grafting.

Bill

[Stvrob]

I had good luck with trimming the scion foliage way back and grafting quite high on the rootstock, like above the 2nd or even 3rd leaf. I hadn't planned on doing it that way but I was trying to match up with overgrown rootstock. I have lately had good luck by not trimming the leaves from rootstock, I feel like the rootstock continues to thrive and is not forced to depend on a weak scion until it begins growing well. On a few plants I've even made a second graft of a different variety if a rootstock sucker begins growing. I kept a tray of different heirlooms always growing, I would harvest scions above the cotyledons so they would sucker and I'd always be able to find something to clip a scion from. Now that I'm done grafting I felt sorry for the hideously malformed plants that have been pruned relentlessly for their body parts. I potted them up and will try to find a home for them while they live out their remaining days in a secluded part of the garden.

[b54red]

I also had some luck with the rootstock that were grafted high. The only problem I had was they took up so much more room in the healing chambers. They probably wilted the least of any of my grafts. I pulled many of the clips off of the plants and on some you cant even tell where the graft is and on others it is amazing they stuck together.

Some I had to graft really low down on the rootstock. I can foresee some problems with roots coming down from the scion especially if mulched. I'll have to plant really shallow and hope for the best on those.

Bill

[tuk50]

I couldn't find any information, whether the scion or root stock determined the date to maturity... if scion is late maturity and root stock is early date to maturity, what will the results be? thanks

[Stvrob]

Tuk, I assumed that would be controlled by the scion. I might be wrong though.

[tuk50]

Thanks, I hope it is the case.. due to the heat here on the desert.. we have two growing seasons, so early varieties will perform better than many late varieties... it seems logical, had not thought of it before.

[Stvrob]

Originally Posted by JamesL;332162
PS- I also sent an email to the contact at OSU to inquire.

Edit 3.6.13 - the video - certainly not a joke or a hoax.
I traded emails with OSU and received permission to share the info. I also extended an invitation to join us.
I asked the following:
I wanted to inquire about your use of cyanoacrylate glue with respect to tomato grafting as referenced on your website.
[URL

http://oardc.osu.edu/graftingtomato/grafting-methods/index.html[/URL]
Specifically 3 questions:
1. What was your success rate with glue grafting vs the use of grafting clips?
2. What type of cyanoacrylate was used?
3. Which method was the most successful? Cleft, tube or glue?

Answer -
For top grafting/tube grafting (both scion and RS cut with a 30 degree angle) We get higher % graft success using cyanoacrylate glue. Our glue of choice is "Krazy Glue", and we prefer the applicator that comes with its own brush.

Hmm Thats what I've been using. I thought I was being pretty careful about not touching the fleshy part of the wound also.

[b54red]

I don't see the need for an angled cut if you are using glue. Seems with an angled cut you would increase the chance of getting glue on the interior of the cut. With a straight cut you would be able to apply slight pressure downward on the scion while the glue is applied and dried.

I looked everywhere for that glue and couldn't find it. How in the world do you keep the brush from becoming stiff when applying it to more than a few grafts? I would still like to try it but I sure would like to here from someone here at Tomatoville that has had success with it.

Bill

[Stvrob]

That bottle came from Ace Hardware

[livinonfaith]

Finally did ten grafts last night!

I don't know how well it went as I had a few problems lining things up, especially with the really small ones that had some "wiggle room" in the clips. Even though the angle between the two was perfect, they kept sliding around and I had a hard time telling if they were lined up well enough that the vascular systems would match.

With the small stems, I finally decided to use the graft where you cut both sides of the stem of the scion, cut a small slit into the stem of the rootstock, and then slide the scion down into the stem of the rootstock. It couldn't move around that way.

Anyway, they are tucked away in a plastic tub and covered by a sheet, so I'm not even going to look at them until tomorrow night.

Wish me luck!

[JamesL]

Livinonfaith,
Excellent! Cleft graft method. I was wondering if anyone had tried that method, and now you have!

[JamesL]

Bill and Stvrob,
I am making the assumption that OSU's success rate with glue is probably due to experience and consistency.
The angle cut as opposed to flat - I wonder if the slight angle allows you to get more downward pressure to keep it lined up than flat.
I am hoping to take a serious run at it and will throw up a new thread once I get organized. Tentative plan is to start some rootstock seed this weekend.

[Delerium]

Any of you use suckers for scions from established plants?

[Stvrob]

Originally Posted by Delerium

Any of you use suckers for scions from established plants?

Yes, not from established plants but from seedlings. I would often take the first scion from above the cotyledons and then when it suckered I would take those for the next batch a few weeks later. Also, I would root the top of the rootstock instead of throwing it away, and it would be ready to graft about the time the Heirlooms suckers were ready. I used far less seed than I thought I would.

I did harvest a lot of suckers from a Mature Celebrity Hybrid that was trying to make it thru the winter. I used those suckers for rootstock.