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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Own roots on the left, grafted on the right. I only have a sample size of 4 non grafted and 3 grafted but results were the most dramatic difference I’ve ever seen in my various garden “experiments”.
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The grafted tomatoes have bullied out the space allowed for the non-grafted ones so taking a picture to compare wouldn’t be enlightening. I was totally unprepared for the vigor of the grafted ones. I had a net (Hortonova), shown back in this thread, for them to climb and had to augment with heavy duty cages in front of that.
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I have had two grafted plants die, but I think they may have had graft unions so low they self rooted. I have been too swamped to keep up with everything as I’d like to, and children and animals rate higher then plants on my priority scale.
I also have a self rooted Bear Claw thriving and making tomatoes. Here are two of the smallest plants I put out. Omar’s Lebonese on the left two strings grafted on transplant date, and a self rooted Bear Claw on the middle two strings that I threw in on a whim after the Stump of the World died when I tried to wean it off its own roots. Plant on the right is a Sun Gold.
Some of the tomato plants are thick with leaves, but no tomatoes.
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Tomato update: The grafted tomatoes outlasted the non-grafted ones because they produced as fast or faster than the blight damage spread. In fact, my tomato season is usually terminated (due to blight) by the 1st week in August, and, according to my notes, sometimes I’m pulling them up even before August gets here. BUT, I just harvested about 5# today - Sept 9th which is a first for me in that tomatoes never last that long here. We had 6" of rain overnight so I expect they’re done done.
Like @joleneakamama the grafted ones (on Maxifort) took longer to give fruit. The ones I started in Jan produced at about the time they should, so I’ll likely try this again but start my grafted ones much earlier.
Has anyone else had issues with late production? Not heard about this in my readings on grafted tomatoes.
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For those who grafted tomatoes (or other veggies) last year, I’m curious what insights you gained. Would you do it again? Do it differently?
@joleneakamama @barry @hoosierbanana @IL847 @PatapscoMike @zendog @danzeb @northof53
I struck out after planting, most of the gourd rootstocks died. Maybe I didn’t get good phloem contact?
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