As I mentioned in my last post, Territorial Seed Company is now selling grafted tomatoes.  According to research being done by Ohio State University, tomatoes that are good to eat can be grafted onto rootstock that is disease resistant and they will grow well and produce more tomatoes than ungrafted plants.  This is important to market growers who often have problems with diseases because they grow large fields of tomatoes year after year.

Grow Out Seeds For Rootstock

So how do you graft a tomato?  Very carefully.  First, you grow the seeds out as you normally would, in a greenhouse or your home.  For the rootstock, most people use either “Maxifort” or “Beaufort.”  Maxifort seems to be the better of the two, so I will refer to it as the rootstock for the rest of the article.  It is a good, vigorous grower but produces terrible-tasting tomatoes.

Grow Out Seeds For Scion

You also need to grow plants of the type you want to get tomatoes from.  Many people are growing heirloom tomatoes that are not disease resistant but produce good-tasting tomatoes.  When grafted onto the disease-resistant rootstock, they grow just fine.

Match Diameters

The diameter of the rootstock plant and the scion, or graftee, must be the same where the graft is done.  Otherwise, the graft doesn’t heal and the plant dies.  There are three main methods of grafting:  tongue approach, cleft grafting, and tube or Japanese grafting.

Cleft Grafting

With cleft grafting, you start the rootstock seeds 5-7 days before you start the scion.  When the plants have four or five leaves, cut the top half of each plant off.  Make a notch in the top of the rootstock plant.  Trim the bottom of the stem from the scion into a wedge.  Put the wedge into the cleft, gently.  Hold the plants together with a grafting clip.  Other clips either have too much tension or not enough.  Remove the clip in 7-10 days.

Tube Grafting

Tube grafting is the type of grafting most often done for commercial tomato production.  That is partly because it can be done as soon as the plants are physically big enough for you to handle.  In order for you to do it, you will need to sow your rootstock 1-2 days prior to the scion.

Cut the rootstock at a slant and discard the top.  Cut the shoot in a matching slant and discard the bottom.  Place the two ends you keep in direct contact with one another, being careful to line them up so the tubes that carry water and nutrients to the leaves and energy to the roots match.  Clip together

Tongue Approach

Finally, the tongue approach involves bigger seedlings in the 14-21 day range.  Cut off the top of the rootstock.  Cut a chunk out of the side of the scion plant, not too deep.  Then insert the end of the rootstock into the chunk.  Clip the plants together.  The scion is still potted, with roots.  In 3-4 days, pinch the stem of the scion below the graft.  Wait another 3-4 days, then cut the bottom stem of the scion off below the graft.

Need Dark Place To Heal

With the cleft and tube methods of grafting, you must place the tomatoes in a fairly dark area and keep them moist so they can heal.  They need around 86 degrees F and 95% relative humidity for optimal healing.  This takes 4-5 days.  The plants must be gradually reintroduced to the regular environment and they are usually in the greenhouse 7-8 days after the graft.

Take Care When Planting

When you get a grafted tomato or make one, and you plant it, there are some things to remember.  Keep the graft well above the soil or the scion will try to root.  The graft area is fragile, so be careful and stake the tomato.

Grafted Versus Regular Tomatoes

The bottom line on grafted tomatoes is that if you are not too picky about tomatoes, grow the conventional kind and enjoy the taste of homegrown tomatoes.  If you are a tomato connoisseur, you might buy some grafted tomatoes and see how you like them.  If you fall in love with them, then you can learn to graft them.  Otherwise, unless your livelihood is at stake, it seems like a lot of trouble and expense for not that must gain.

Want to learn to garden? My first attempt at gardening ended up in failure. The weeds took over and squeezed the vegetables out. I was very frustrated by this waste of good seed, time, and money. So I became a master gardener and spent a lot of time helping other people avoid or overcome problems in their garden. 

In order to help others garden successfully, I have written a book, Vegetable Gardening from the Ground Up, available in an ebook or a paperback from Amazon. It is also in Kindle Unlimited.