The challenge coming will be having the time available to baby them day to day through the healing process. I was hoping to wait until April 6 or later to graft, due to some other commitments, but the way they’re growing I’ll need to graft earlier. Funny thing is I felt I was planting late this year and things would be behind.
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Great job. They look healthy.
I think it was time to add fertilizer. Some of the leaves of the DR0141TX were getting a yellowish/lighter green patchy appearance. I went with 25% strength miracle grow tomato food (18-18-24 blue crystals) in tap water. Can I just water with this from now on? Should I dilute it more?
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I try to at least water once with regular water between fertilizing, but it depends how fast your plants are drying out, etc. I’m watering 2 to 3 times a week now and am using the weak liquid fertilizer once a week to once every 10 days.
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What do you mean 25% strength? 1/4 of the normal dilution? It should be something like 1tsp/gallon. Just making sure you are not overdoing it…
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Yeah, 25% the normal dilution rate. Though perhaps I could breed a new variant of super-tomato with a 25% blue paste rubbed on the leaves? 
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Before I have a heart attack, the two little starter leaves (cotyledon) fall off the plants normally, right? Seems like all of mine are starting to discolor and wilt at the same time
Yes, that is normal.
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That happens a lot when the edema is showing up. Are the leaves curling and showing any spots or white bumps on the stems or leaves? I just grafted all mine today, earlier than I wanted to since I have to be out of town for a few days and trying to squeeze the healing in. The UV light seemed to help, but I did have a little bit of edema starting to mess with them.
So I just checked everything and I saw two leaves with what looks like edema. They are both leaves that have curled a little and don’t seem to be getting exposure to the grow light.
What’s the best course to fix the edema?
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Sorry to see that - it is a race to the grafting finish line when this happens. Once grafted, it seems not to be an issue since the scion tomatoes aren’t nearly as susceptible to the issue. If you get some warm days, you might get them out in the breeze with the sun. Be careful not to overwater and keep them on the drier side. You may lose some true leaves, but as long as the stems don’t get bad you can still make it work.
Interesting. We’ll just have to see how it goes. I have a better grow light (with more UV) coming in and I’m going to put them in a grow tent for better light distribution. I planted more of the rootstock than I needed, so if I lose a few it shouldn’t be a problem
I have learned two more things about tomatoes today. Tomatoes are tough. But indoor tomatoes are weak.
I’m not even sure what I was thinking, but in an effort to get the tomatoes some real light I took them outside for a half hour.
But instead of leaving them in indirect light, they got full sun.
It’s amazing how fast the undersides of the leaves can turn purple 
But then after only a couple hours indoors they’ve all popped back up
So it seems like if I have any success with this grafting experiment, it will be despite my best efforts
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Hello, my name is Seth and I’m an addict…
Okay, so there was entirely too much variability in the setup for me to get an idea as to what works and what doesn’t. So.
I replaced this light:
75W LED Grow Light for Indoor Plants
With this one:
SAYHON Newest SH2000 Full Spectrum Grow Lights
The original light used 25 watts with only one setting, and the new light uses between 25 and 200 watts with a variable controller. It also has UV, IR, and full spectrum white LEDs. It gets very hot at full power.
Next, I got a grow tent with reflective insides to stabilize the amount of light the plants are getting regardless of their position under the light. However, the enclosed tent traps the heat from the light, so I had to install an exhaust fan . With the fan running and the light on full power, the tent maintains around 80°F.
VIVOSUN 30"x18"x36" Grow Tent,
Finally, is the issue of watering. I still don’t have this dialed in, it seems like there’s no middle ground between upright plants and drooped over like they’re all dead. I’ve had that happen a few times now, but adding water bounces them back within a couple hours. I’m thinking I can make every other day work, but I’m not entirely sure how much water to add. I’ve tried both top watering and bottom watering.
The problem with bottom watering is the distribution of the seedling cells means some take up water from the tray better than others, so I either have to add more water to the tray that I need in order for all the cells to get water, or I need to remove them from the tray and dump the excess in the tray once everything has taken up enough moisture.
I’m going to try putting the seed tray into a container of water for a set time. Maybe 4 or 5 minutes, since that seems to be when the water reaches the top. At least this way I can adjust based on some sort of metric.
You can see I have the humidity dome in there with the next batch of seedlings, since it’s free heat from the lamp. On top of that, you’ll see the leftover container that my seedling trays fit into for watering. I just add water to the container, drop in the seedling tray and set a timer. For the initial timing, I used the point at which moisture could be seen at the top of the soil.
Finally, here’s what my rootstock looks like today. The seedlings broke the surface of the soil on March 14th, so we’re at just about 3 weeks. Does this seem like relatively normal growth? Considering how much abuse they’ve taken from my inexperience, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they’re behind.
And here’s the whole group:
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I think your rootstocks look good and that seems about consistent with what I see for growth. Please let us know how that light works out for you. Looks nice, especially with that UV bar in the middle.
I grafted mine last Monday and they are fully out from under the humidity dome as of today. I was rushed since I wanted to get them mostly healed before leaving for this past weekend and then left them with the humidity dome propped up slightly and the top vents open hoping they’d be fine for a few days. Too much humidity for too long and you get a lot of adventitious roots trying to start, etc. plus sometimes moldy leaves start as well. Luckily almost all of them made it.
The 3 or so I lost were due to bumping them after setting the clips and losing good contact between the scion and rootstock and at least one that was too thin to be held tight by the clips. Waiting a few more days would have helped, but poor timing with the weekend away meant that wasn’t an option. Anyone using the silicon clips, I suggest test fitting them on the rootstock stems and then grafting when you can still get them on, but it is a nice tight fit.
The tops might look a little spindly, but that is because I cut back some of the leaves on the scions when grafting so the graft doesn’t have to support as much surface area right away. Also, many of these are heart types that have wispy foliage overall.
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Celebrity scion on Early Girl root and Early Girl scion on Celebrity root. These two grafts were for grafting practice only but assuming they make it I will plant them. The only thing interesting to me is seeing the effect of crossing determinant and indeterminate varieties. The clips you use would be easier but just using parafilm wasn’t too difficult.
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Good luck and let us know what you observe about the determinate on an indeterminate root.
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Things aren’t going great in tomato land, and I have no idea why.
I’m not sure if I’m over watering, but as soon as the soil dries out they fall over completely. They rebound with water, but the growth seems to have stalled out.
Leaves look weak and are discoloring.
The tent is around 80° with the light on and 70° when off. On 18 hours a day.
Ideas?
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Hmm… I’m not really sure since there are a lot of variables. I know you just got a new light. I wonder if it could be too much for them. Can you dim it, possibly to 50%, and maybe cut the hours back to 14 on instead of 18? This is just a guess since I don’t know all the changes you may have made and what exactly is happening with the plants.
What are you doing for fertilizing? What type, how much and how often?
I realize you are probably keeping them in the smaller cells for dealing with them for grafting, but potting them up could also be helpful. If potting up messes with your plans, you might try adding some potting mix on the top just to give them a little more media to be in and hopefully slow how much they dry out.
Any other changes you may have made that you feel could correspond to their stalling out?
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