Grafted tomato report

[Babru]

This was my first season in my new greenhouse. I grew some grafted tomatoes and cucumber from Suttons and said I would report back on success or otherwise of the grafted plants.

The grafted toms were Shirley, Gardener's Delight and Sungold. Suttons accidentally sent Lizzanno instead of Orange Paruche, which was a pity. I also got a grafted cucumber Delistar.

All of the plants did GREAT! Very vigorous, loads of fruit. I visited a few open gardens under the Scotland's Gardens Scheme over the summer, and my tomato plants were twice the size of the ones I saw in other peoples' greenhouses, and looked to have more fruit on them too.

I also grew non-grafted Sungold, Czech Bush, Red Alert and Black Russian, and they all did pretty well too, though not such big plants.

The Lizzanno was outside in a pot and it produced a lot of fruit, though not top for taste. Growing tomatoes outside in Edinburgh is a bit hit and miss, so this is clearly a suitable variety for the purpose, even if there are tastier choices.

My conclusion? Hard to be certain whether you get a bigger crop or not, I think possibly yes, so I may go down the route of a few grafted and a few seed grown next year....just to hedge my bets. Been a lot of fun though!

[ameno]

Which Gardening did tests on grafted veg a few years ago, and found that grafted Solanum (tomatoes, aubergine, peppers) only cropped slightly better than normal ones, and so probably weren't worth the expense.
Grafted cucurbits (cucumbers and melons), on the other hand, did much better and gave a significantly heavier crop, especially the melons.

[Mark_Riga]

The main benefit of grafted tomatoes is that the rootstock should have a good deal of immunity to a lot of soil born diseases but not any above ground ones (like blight) obviously. I planted 21 grafted tomatoes this year that were doing well till a couple developed tomato leaf mould in early August that quickly spread and helped to assist in botrytis getting a foothold as well. I planted grafted last year when they didn't develop any moulds and at this stage had harvested 77kg while this year just 57kg.

[Stan79]

I got some grafted toms from Suttons too but am seriously unimpressed. They arrived late. They didn't send what i ordered. I had to chase the missing plants (Suttons didn't mention anything in the delivered order) and was generally unimpressed with their customer service.

The crop of my home grown tomatoes has been massively impressive. It was good to have different varieties but the crop on all of the grafted ones was poor in my opinion as the arrived so late in the season. I got free plants off our local Facebook group that turned out to be Sungold that have been absolutely phenomenal croppers!

[Babru]

My non grafted Sungolds were fantastic too. However they're all past now, and my grafted Shirley has a fair number of large tomatoes still ripening.

Suttons mucked my order a bit too. Sent a grafted Lizanno instead of Orange Paruche, which was a shame. However they refunded the cost so Lizanno was free. Got a fair crop outside too.

My plants came from Suttons in May, and earlier would have been no good as we had a really cold spring.

I think I'll do a bit of both next year. We get a short season here, so every little helps. Now I know how easy it is to grow tomatoes from seed though, I'm looking forward to having a few interesting non grafted varieties too.

[It never rains..it pours]

Babru, interesting may try a grafted to compare next year. Just been put off by the £3 odd vs 50p odd (seed, light, compost) Having similar season to you, I find planting all the seeds at same time but putting some into unheated greehouse once frost has gone vs keeping in conservatory spreads harvest too. Conservatory started picking late June, removed few weeks ago but greehouse are producing well still