Let's Play "What's My Tomato?"

"Enter, Mystery Tomato, and sign in, please."

When we did the tomato grafting this Spring, the results were not quite as successful as we had hoped they would be; only one of the ten grafted plants survived.  See:  http://plantagarden-itllgrowonyou.blogspot.com/2016/04/not-quite-as-successful-as-we-hoped.html.

The one tomato plant that did survive was supposed to be a Rose de Berne on Estamino root stock.
We were a little surprised when the surviving plant put on a huge growth spurt and began rambling all over that end of the raised bed.  It produced very large yellow flowers that attracted the attention of an industrious bumble bee and of the California Towhees, but as time went on, not much in the way of tomatoes appeared.

Grafted Plant on the Left

When tomatoes did begin to appear, they were small, clustered and yellow.  We kept waiting for them to ripen, but they stayed yellow.  When they began dropping off the vine, Cindy started picking them and determined that they were actually ripe.  They tasted all right, but were just small and yellow.

Mystery Tomatoes

The Rose de Berne tomato is described as a dark pink tomato weighing between 6 to 8 ounces with good, sweet flavor.  The plant right next to the mystery plant is from the same lot of seeds labeled "Rose de Berne" and appears to be an actual Rose de Berne plant and is certainly producing the big round dark pink tomatoes we expect from that plant.

Actual Rose de Berne Tomato

So then what is the mystery plant and how did we end up with it?  Was it a bad seed?  Did the seeds get mixed up?  I'm not buying the bad seed explanation because the mystery tomato produces clusters of small tomatoes, while the Rose de Berne produces a single tomato on a stem, not a clump.

Cindy doesn't remember ever ordering any seeds for tomato plants that produce small yellow tomatoes, although it's possible that the seeds got mixed up by the grower Cindy bought the seeds from.

Two possibilities are the Galena's tomato  http://www.tomatogrowers.com/GALINAS/productinfo/5882/ and the Garden Peach  http://www.tomatogrowers.com/GARDEN-PEACH/productinfo/5324/.

The yellow tomatoes do have a faint bit of fuzz on them like the Garden Peach, but not what I would call "abundant clusters" of fruit.

It may just remain a mystery.

Not Quite As Successful As We Hoped

Unfortunately, that's the verdict on this year's effort at grafting heirloom tomato plants to tomato root stock.

Cindy started the seeds several weeks ago, transporting them from the small greenhouse out behind the garage to inside the garage at night.  When the plants were big enough, she began the process of grafting them.

Setting Up For the Operation

First she matches up tomato and root plant with stems that are approximately the same width, then slices off the top of one tomato and one root plant; she keeps the tomato top and discards the top of the root plant.  She also cuts off most of the leaves of the tomato top so that the plant will put most of its energy into healing the graft instead of producing more leaves.

Then she makes the grafting cuts with a razor blade in both stems and clips both halves together.

Trimming the Tops

Grafted Plants

The plants go into a dark space overnight with a plastic bin over the top of the tray to keep the humidity up and the plants moist.

Humid Environment

Inspected By Miss Mia

After that they go into dim light in the garage for a couple of days and continue to grow.

At least that was the plan.

After a couple of days, all but one of the plants had keeled over and it was clear they had not survived.

Lone Survivor

And the winner is.... Rose de Berne on Estamino root stock.

Fortunately, Cindy still has quite a few ungrafted tomato plants, so it doesn't all depend on this one plant and we should still have plenty of tomatoes this summer.

Grafted Tomato Plants

Last March Cindy grafted some of her tomato seedlings onto tomato root stock (see:  Dr. Cindy and Dr. Kay Operate), to give the tomato plants a better chance to fend off Fusarium Wilt and other fungus and bacterial diseases that attack tomato plants.

Last year's experiment with one Box Car Willie tomato plant was a success, so of course this year Cindy decided to try several different varieties of tomato: Box Car Willie, Stupice and Sioux and several different root stocks.  The Sioux plant and one of the Box Car Willies didn't survive for long, and Cindy hasn't pulled out the Stupice plants yet, but the other two grafted Box Cars and the control did very well.  All three were planted in the same bed and all three produced tomatoes, although we didn't keep track of which plant produced the most fruit this year.

Since the tomatoes are now at the end of their productive season, Cindy tore the Box Car Willie plants out yesterday, so we were able to compare the root systems of all three of those plants.

A Tale of Three Box Cars

From left to right in this picture, the control plant is on the left, the middle plant was grafted onto RST-04-106 rootstock from Tomato Growers Supply Company, and the plant on the right was grafted onto Estamino F-1 rootstock from Natural Gardening Company.

The main stem and subsidiary stems on the Estamino rootstock plant were larger than those on the RST-04-106 and about twice the size of the stems on the control plant.

Estamino and Control Plant Roots 

Estamino plant roots on the left and control plant roots on the right.

I have a feeling that next year there will be more grafting.

One More Thing

One thing that did surprise us about the Box Car Willie experiment, where Cindy grafted a tomato plant onto disease-resistant tomato root stock was that the grafted Box Car Willie produced much larger tomatoes than the ungrafted plant right beside it.

A Tale of Two Box Cars

This picture shows tomatoes from both plants: the tomato from the ungrafted plant is on the left and the grafted one on the right.  The ungrafted one was about three quarters of a pound and the grafted one weighed 1 and three quarters pounds.  

That's a lot of tomato.  

Last Tomato Standing

Grafted Box Car Willie

By this time it should come as no surprise that the last tomato plant standing is the Box Car Willie plant that was grafted onto disease-resistant root stock.

That plant has shown signs of stress in the form of yellowing leaves, but managed to fight off the powdery mildew and bacterial wilt that claimed all of the other tomato plants this season.

Other San Diego gardeners have reported that this was a terrible year for tomatoes all the way around; we enjoyed a mild winter, but apparently it never got cold enough to kill off all the bacteria and bugs that love our veggies as much as we do.

We are pleased that this plant was so successful, since it shows that it is possible to combat these diseases.  Cindy is hoping to have several other Master Gardeners graft their tomatoes next year so that we can develop more information about what works and what doesn't work so well.