Planted out 30 plants last night under a tall string trellis frame
8 feet high.
Two are ungrafted root stock, and one is an ungrafted Everglades cherry.
The guy in the background is watering in applegreen eggplant to night.
Two are ungrafted root stock, and one is an ungrafted Everglades cherry.
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Ack, I planted out a dozen grafted tomatoes and now we’ve had endless rain and they are trying to root out from the scions. The rain is splashing the soil up on the stem and the continued moisture is keeping everything moist enough. Since the graft is right below where the cotyledons were on the rootstock, it seems like this is going to be something I’ll have to be on top of all season long. I’m hoping the soil splashed on the stem and the start of roots won’t get any of the soil borne disease into the scion part. The roots are just starting and I’ll keep clipping them off, but it still seems like it is possible the disease resistant benefit could easily be lost by this.
I’m clipping off any roots I see forming before they reach the soil and will mulch around them with paper, but I think the continued intermittent rain we’re expecting over the next 2-3 days means they’ll keep trying to root out.
I’m thinking that if I want to plant them out in the open it might be better to let the rootstocks get taller and graft the scions higher next year. It just means I have to keep on top of suckering from the rootstock, but that is better than loosing the benefit of the grafting if the scion is rooting.
If you zoom in to the picture you can see the root starting on the scion around the middle of the grafting clip. Some of the others had a lot more roots than this one.
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Nice. Do you think that the scion’s attempt at rooting might be a sign that the graft has not completely healed?
Another thought. Mine seemed to take forever to heal but I didn’t see any scion roots either. Perhaps one of the issues causing slow heal and no roots from the scion is that I removed a lot more leaves from the scion before grafting than it seems that you did. That means a lot less energy down the phloem when placed in the light, which, may cause rooting tissue to form. I’m wondering if you removed a few leaves from an agressive scion rooter would obviate the need for vigilance in trimming. Let us know if you try this.
2 questions:
How tall are your seedlings now?
What growing medium did you use for your rootstock?
Thanks for posting
Anne
That is possible, but they seem well healed to me. I think it is mostly because there has just been so much continuous rain, plus soil splashed up along the stem as well, pretty much caking them in wet soil conducive to rooting. I have taken the clips off all of them and rubbed the stems to knock off any roots and they are sturdy. I actually have 3 grafted plants still in the starter cells and they are out of the rain and showing no signs of rooting so the rain and possibly the wet dirt on the stems appear to be what is causing it. Also there are roots coming out of the rootstock stems as well so the moisture is basically making the whole garden into a misting chamber.
But I think the scions are also predisposed to root out at this point since I had rooting start on many of them while they were in the healing process, probably because I kept them under plastic for too long (6 days) and was spritzing them with a spray bottle every day for the first three days. I expect the extended humidity combined with the water getting trapped by the clips lead to the rooting starting before they were uncovered. Next year I’ll be more vigilant about getting them out from under the plastic and not baby them so much even if it means a few more don’t make it since I think the rooting is a real problem and once you create the cells differentiated to root cells it is more likely to happen again. Next year I will also graft them higher instead of cutting the rootstocks below the cotyledons so the scion isn’t as close to the ground. The videos I watched suggested cutting below the cotyledons to avoid rootstock suckers but with my few plants I can easily just watch and pinch out any that emerge.
In terms of size of the scions, I basically used this video as a guide for how big to grow the plants and how much foliage was on the scions.
I planted the rootsock and scion plants in ProMix BX and had 15 of 18 survive. After grafting the complete plant was about 4-5 inches and now they’re close to 6 inches, greened up and growing.
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I grafted half of my muskmelons onto African horned melon rootstock. Here’s why…this non-grafted savor melon collapsed over the last couple of days, which is what happened to my entire crop last year. As you can see it has major nematode damage to the roots. Three grafted and three non-grafted plants are still going strong. Will post again when I have more to report.
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Glad to see so many people doing this now. Has anyone been growing melons on pumpkins this year Can't grow watermelon but can grow pumpkins?? Tomato grafting Tomato grafting has got very popular. This is another interesting thread Tomatoes for 2016
I am going to graft tomatoes next year, I am tired of losing all the later harvest every year.
What’s the cheapest source for good resistant seed?
I would say get a pack of early girl or better boy or something with VFN resisitance
Johnny’s and Harris seem to have the most variety. For our zone, I went with the strain ‘DRO’ from Johnny’s for resistence to Fusarium wilt 1&2, Fusarium crown and root rot, leaf molds a-e, corky root rot, tobacco mosaic virus, and verticillium wilt. I think verticillium wilt is my biggest problem. For the sake of experimenttation I also got seeds of ‘RST-04-106T’ from Harris for the strong resistance to bacterial wilt, three races of Fusarium wilt, corky root rot, nematodes, and also resistance to Tobacco Mosaic Virus.
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I planted one grafted brandywine pink，one not grafted brandywine tomato 2 feet apart for easy comparison. The rootstock is VNF resistant beef type tomato. They are between 2~3feet tall with grafted one is few inches shorter due to recovering from the grafting. After heavy rain and temperature in upper 80s. The none grafted brandywine’s lower leafs show more yellowing than the grafted one.
I will continue monitoring and comparing their disease resistance and fruits set throughout the season.
This is none grafted plant:
This is grafted on vnf resistant rootstock:
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Nice Annie.
Here are some comparison pics from my first go at grafting tomatoes which I did back in January so I could make my mistakes before my normal seeding time in Feb/Mar. Turns out I had better success rate with these than my later attempts.
The one on the left is grafted; right, non grafted. Variety: Golden Jubilee.
This is for Father’s Day lunch sandwiches. 
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Nice. Your grafted one looked significantly bigger. How low on the rootstock did you graft the scion on?
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Generally about 1" to 2" above the soil. As you know, it is a matching game so I did the best matching that I could.
The lower % of takes were from the silicone tube type ‘clips’. These tomatoes above, and some later ones with the plastic spring clips fared better. Could be me and my awkwardness, though.
All the clips I used put some force on the stem to make close contact between rootstock and scion. I got them from aliexpress. They are cheap but work out well with not too large stem.
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I’m going to try parafilm next spring, some people like it for tomatoes and I have a lot of it already 
You need to stretch it out first before wrapping.
Mike I bought some of those, I’ll probably forget if I don’t get them now. If anyone wants say 25 seeds for $17 plus postage send me a PM - I got 50 for $34 and thats more than I need. Tomato seeds last for several years but I don’t grow that many plants each year.
Grafted canary melons, lopes, and watermelons onto a few different types of bottle gourds and one type of pumpkin. Lost a bunch after planting out for some reason, probably bad technique, made the cuts steeper than I was supposed to for more contact and think the stocks split down the center.
… also made this knife for veggies and toothpick scions, it has 2 flat bevels so I can cut either direction. I handle it like a venomous snake, just taking it out for the picture made me nervous, scary sharp is an understatement.
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Another of my non-grafted melons went to melon heaven due to nematodes. So far that’s 2/4 non grafted dead and 0/3 grafted dead. Another one of the non-grafted is not growing strong and has set no fruit. All three grafted ones have at least 2 fruits each and look great.
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How are the tomato grafts doing?
Just to practice I did a few onto Sun Gold cherry tomato rootstock. I was wondering why some of the tomatoes weren’t sizing up and discovered the rootstock sent up a stem so now I have both cherry and full size tomatoes on the same plant.
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