Tomato Report

This year's effort at tomato grafting was not as successful as we had wanted it to be; Cindy was hoping for a 30% success rate, but only one out of the 10 grafted plants survived for more than a few days.  See:  Not Quite as Successful As We Hoped.

However, 10% is better than 0%, so we'll take it.

Better yet, the surviving tomato plant, a Rose de Berne on Estamino root stock, is thriving.  In fact, it's doing so well that it's almost twice as tall as the ungrafted Rose de Berne plant next to it.

Grafted Tomato on Left, Ungrafted on Right

Not only is the plant taller, but the blossoms and the leaves are much larger on the grafted plant as well.

Grafted

Ungrafted

The leaves in the top photo are from the grafted Rose de Berne, the ungrafted Rose de Berne leaves are in the bottom photo.  The plants are side-by-side in the bed and I took the photos from the same spot.

Grafted Plant's Blossoms

The blossoms on the grafted plant are also much larger.  They're very pretty and they've also been attracting a bumblebee performing "buzz pollination".  I had never heard of this, but Cindy had recently read an article about bees and realized that the bumblebee she saw on the tomato blossom was loosening the pollen by buzzing over the flower's anther.  The bee rapidly contracts her flight muscles to create the buzz, then collects the loose pollen and transmits some of it to the next flower she visits.  BumblebeeConservation.org has a video of bumblebees doing this.

Tomatoes and blueberries both can benefit from buzz pollination, although because tomatoes have both male and female parts in the flower, they can also be pollinated by shaking the tomato cage, which will mix the pollen.  

We're happy to have the bumblebees, though, and looking forward to tomatoes later.