Grafted plants

[tim]

Dobies are doing them this year - for earliness & vigour.

Might be of interest, especially for the Aubergines?

[tim]

[OberonUK]

B&Q were selling a selection of grafted plants the other day - these come from Suttons (Dobies by any other name - it is the same stock I think). Range included tomatoes (plum/beef/standard), aubergines, courgettes and a couple of varieties of pepper.

I bought two toms and a chilli and they look like very strong, vigorous plants. They promise exceptional yield and very strong root growth (they recommend against planting in grow-bags). I think I paid about £3 - £4 per plant. It was an experiment really to see how they compare to my own seed-grown plants. I suspect they are going to be VERY thirsty so maybe not for someone who wants to grow in pots and can't be available to water two or three times a day!

They also say to not plant deeper than the graft point - so if you get a leggy plant (not saying they would send them out leggy) then there is no option to sink the stem deeper to encourage more root growth.

(My own toms are setting fruit, the grafters are not even flowering yet, just to give you an idea of where they are in terms of maturity.)

[chriscross1966]

You can get grafting rootstock seed from the better seedsmen (not the shiny packets in the GC though) ... I tried it a way back (gotta be nearly 20 years.

Grafting tomatoes is a couple of fiddly 2-hour evenings to fill the GH but I had few failures. They crop well, generally a bit earlier than the "normal" plants and they crop a bit heavier, generally by having a few flowers extra per truss and a short internode so you get another truss on the plant before it hits the top of the GH..... they go through water and feed heavily though, autowatering definietly the way to go and slosh the quarter strength tom food round every day and keep some Epsom salts to hand cos all the ones I ever grew ended up wanting Magnesium ......

One obvious issue is that at some point in March you've got twice as many tomato plants as usual needing your attention, I tended to graft at about 4 to 5" tall, for me that's 3" pot stage......

chrisc