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Old February 9, 2013   #76
Stvrob
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Ive been trimming alot more of the foliage off the scion. So much that when it wilts its not heavy enough to bow it over to the side, plus I feel that just a bit of leaf showing reduces the water loss. Of course your way, once it perks up its back and growing much more quickly.
And of course please realize the extent of my experience dates back only to January, so I am certainly no expert.
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Old February 9, 2013   #77
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Red, yes, for the first two days I had the sides completely covered up. I'm trying to introduce some artificial light, but I'm not sure it's going so well. One thing I've minded from the articles is the recommendation to not water before transplanting. My seedlings are all setting in trays with an inch of standing water. Next round, I will remove the RS/scion pairs to waterless spot and give them 24-hours w/out water before grafting.
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Old February 9, 2013   #78
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I recharged my camera battery last night so I decided to take some pics of my grafting progress.

First is the lovely old beach towel that is covering the sides of the two healing chambers.

The second shows the two different chambers stacked on top of each other for now. The top one is without its lid at day 5 and the bottom one is in day 2.

Third is the 5 day old grafts looking in the open healing chamber.

Fourth is the 2 day old grafts looking inside the temporarily opened healing chamber.

Fifth is a picture of rootstock just potted up and last is a batch of scions just potted up and others in egg cartons that I'm in the process of potting up. I think I may be getting a bit too ambitious with this grafting.
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Old February 9, 2013   #79
Mlm1
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Bill, the grafts look great. Is that 100% success rate on your first try? Or pretty close I bet. Very nice. I think I'll go give mine a little talking to-let them know what's possible.
Marla
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Old February 9, 2013   #80
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Maria it is a little too early to tell. I have a couple that look a bit sad so I'll just wait and see. Another problem is I am doing this on my covered back porch which has no heat other than the sun. At night it can get down around 40 degrees and at mid afternoon it may be up above 80. I don't know what these big fluctuations in temperatures will do to the healing process.
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Old February 9, 2013   #81
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b54red (or Bill?),

Wow, those look great! I'm very impressed. But I do see something that confuses me.... It looks like you did the graft above the rootstock cotyledons (as the article Naysen linked to seems to say you should do), but in the Johnny's PDF and elsewhere I've read that you should prepare your rootstock for grafting by removing the top below the rootstock cotyledons. It was my understanding that if you grafted about the rootstock cotyledons you'd have leaders from the rootstock coming up that you'd have to keep pruning. Although if you're using an "eating tomato" for a rootstock, maybe you want this - you'd basically have two varieties going per plant. At least this is my understanding of things, but I'm often wrong <g>.

So what are peoples' opinion on where to make the cut on the rootstock - below or above the cotyleons??

BTW, I love your beach towel!

Anne
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Old February 9, 2013   #82
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Anne. I've done them both above and below the cotyledon. Whatever it takes to get the size to match. To often its meant cutting the rootstock way up past the first leaves and cutting the scion at ground level (poor planning/timing of starting seed). If the rootstock wants to throw up a sucker that's easy enough to deal with later. In a few instances I've grafted a second variety on a sucker, just for grins.
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Old February 9, 2013   #83
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Dang Red. Are you going to grow all those plants? You growing for market?
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Old February 9, 2013   #84
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Anne, if you're growing one of the extremely vigorous rootstocks with inedible fruits, like Maxifort, I would recommend making the cut below the cotyledons, to lessen the chances of the rootstock throwing a shoot. A couple years ago, I intentionally topped the Maxifort rootstocks and let both axillary shoots grow so that I could graft different varieties onto each and have two different scions on each plant. I grow in cages, so when the scions filled the cages, having the rootstock grow a sucker and sneakily send it up through the cage before I caught on was a royal pain. The rootstock suckers grew so quickly (think Jack-and-the-beanstalk) that they outcompeted the scion plants easily, but once they're all woven together it's hard to get rid of them. Luckily, the Maxifort has recognizably different leaves or I would have let them grow, thinking they were going to produce edible fruit.

Last year I grafted a single scion per rootstock, making the cut below the cotyledons. Far easier to manage!
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Old February 10, 2013   #85
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aclum View Post
b54red (or Bill?),

Wow, those look great! I'm very impressed. But I do see something that confuses me.... It looks like you did the graft above the rootstock cotyledons (as the article Naysen linked to seems to say you should do), but in the Johnny's PDF and elsewhere I've read that you should prepare your rootstock for grafting by removing the top below the rootstock cotyledons. It was my understanding that if you grafted about the rootstock cotyledons you'd have leaders from the rootstock coming up that you'd have to keep pruning. Although if you're using an "eating tomato" for a rootstock, maybe you want this - you'd basically have two varieties going per plant. At least this is my understanding of things, but I'm often wrong <g>.

So what are peoples' opinion on where to make the cut on the rootstock - below or above the cotyleons??

BTW, I love your beach towel!

Anne
I was just trying to match the rootstock to the scions. It became increasingly difficult after the first half dozen easy matches. In my second batch I had to wait til the rootstock got taller so I could find a place where the stem was small enough to match a scion. I don't let any suckers form for the first foot or two anyway. With our humid conditions it is not good to have any foliage near the soil.

Stvrob, I will not grow anywhere near all those plants. Almost all of the potted up plants in the pics will be used in my grafting attempts. I have a hard time going into something half way so I just dived in. If half of them survive the grafting then at least half again will be given away. My wife has many coworkers who wait to see what plants they will get for free each year. A good friend and I split the cost of many of these crazy gardening projects and split the work of planting up and such and he and his wife will also be giving plants away. We have really advanced the cause of OP tomatoes down here in a commercial tomato growing area. A few years ago most people would cringe at the sight of a black tomato and now they are the number one requested plant.

I went out and checked the plants this morning in the opened 6 day old grafts container. At least 3 look like they will not make it and a couple more don't look too good. Surprisingly it is the smaller plants that seem to be failing. Well there is no doubt that I won't have a 100% success rate. I guess in a few days I'll be able to give an accurate percentage on the first attempt.
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Old February 10, 2013   #86
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Last year I grafted a single scion per rootstock, making the cut below the cotyledons. Far easier to manage!
Bitterwort:
I was assuming that each leaf axil would only try to sucker once, and once you removed the rootstock sucker, that would be the end of that. Do the maxifort's keep trying to sucker from the same point?
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Old February 10, 2013   #87
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Question to all that have planted grafted tomatoes:
do you plant it as deep as cotyledon leafs? Does anyone plants it deeper?
Here in NJ the weather sometimes prevents me from planting tomatoes early enough
and they overgrow, so I have to plant it deeper and at an angle.
Any of you tried to do that with grafted tomatoes?
thanks
Ella
P.S. if I start grafting experiment now, I may end up having bigger seedlings by mid May than needed.
this post makes me want to start my plants now and it is a bit early...
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Old February 10, 2013   #88
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Stvrob, that's probably true, although I can't verify it (and Maxifort is pretty game to grow, so I suspect it might be able to reorganize a new shoot if you didn't remove the entire sucker down to the main stem).

Here's the problem with the method I was using. To make the initial grafts, I topped the rootstock plant to make the two axillary shoots develop so I could graft onto them. Those new stems often weren't very tall, so I sometime grafted above the bottom node on that shoot. See where this is going? Each node can easily make two side shoots, and if you're grafting shoots on two sides of the rootstock and you can't easily get down and in to the base of the plant to clip the suckers cleanly once it starts growing a giant canopy... voila! At any rate, that was my recipe for runaway rootstock suckers.

Ella, try to hold back. :-) If your grafted plants get large, plant them in larger pots (1- or 2-gallon) before you have to plant out. If you're counting on resistance to soilborne diseases from the rootstock, then planting deeper so that the scion also roots negates that purpose. I sometimes plant transplants that are 2' tall, but as long as they've had good root and canopy development in a large pot, it seems to work fine. If yours were to get spindly, I would tie them to a small bamboo pole for plantout and wait for the stem to grow sturdy in the ground rather than planting too deep. That's just my opinion.
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Old February 10, 2013   #89
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I've never planted a grafted tomato, This is my first year experimenting with grafts. I do not intend to plant them deep no matter how leggy they are because I don't want to risk roots forming above the graft. That would defeat the purpose of grafting it by risking the scion to soilbourne infection.
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Old February 10, 2013   #90
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Bitterwort:
I may be causing myself more work regarding rootstock suckers. Mine are actually grafted onto betterboy, celebrity, and supersweet100, so hopefully it won't get out of control. Plus I only plan to grow about 15 plants so I'm hoping it will be manageable.
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