Grafting Tomatoes

Grafting tomatoes is a new topic for me. I have heard of the procedure before, and it seemed like a lot of work. But still I am intrigued. You take a strong root and graft in a top fruit producer with the characteristics you want. The vigor of the roots and disease resistance produce high quality and long lasting plants.

The benefits are a plant in production that does not slack but is strong through the entire season. I would not be surprised if the production doubled by this grafting procedure, but I have not seen specific data to date. Pictures of comparison plants are impressive as to the difference.

The negatives with grafting include: you have to grow two sets of plants to get one grafted plant combination, the time involved in the grafting and nursing the plants back to health, and the root stock seeds seem a fair bit more expensive than regular tomato seeds (~$0.50 per seed).

I think the best application for grafted plants would be green house growing, where the grower wants an entire season of production, and where disease pressure is high. I would guess there is a cost benefit ratio, and the higher your greenhouse costs, the more logical it is to maximize production within that growing space.


Technique:

Keep your tools and work area clean; you will be doing major surgery on the plants. Organize your work area consistently, so that you don't become confused during the grafting process. I have seen two grafting methods demonstrated:

• Joining the root and scion incrementally, leaving both root stocks attached for a time, and then later weaning to only the root stock.
• A clean cut through the entire stem of each plant, and joining the root and scion via angled cuts within a silicone tubular clip.
• A clean cut of the root and scion. The root is cut vertically, and the scion is cut like a "V" to be inserted in the root as a wedge.

Once the graft has been made, keep the plants well hydrated with high humidity and out of the sun for ~5 days. Introduce them to normal conditions very gradually and support the plant to take any pressure off of the graft area till well healed.


My goal is to practice grafting using common tomato plants, and then try some of the disease resistance root stock for a trial of how the plants perform as compared to a control.


Resources:

• Tomato grafting overview (pdf)
• Tomato tube grafting technique (pdf)
• Tomato grafting demo (video)
• Grafted Tomato Yield Data (web)
• Maxifort (F1) rootstock high vigor (web order)
• Colosus (F1) rootstock (web order)
• Beaufort (F1) rootstock medium vigor (web order)