Hard graft: my post-operative tomatoes

Three of my newly-grafted tomato plants, in which the top of a good fruiting variety (Black Russian, in this instance) has been grafted on to a vigorous, disease-resistant stem and root. These plants have now been moved somewhere dimly lit  to recover from their transplant surgery. After three or four days, I'll move them back into the light and if the grafts have taken well, remove the orange grafting clips. When I see new leaf growth at the top, I'll cut off the old root stem and cut down the bare top of the rootstock. Once the plants are trimmed, the 'new' plant will consist of the leafy top that you see growing to the left, and the vigorous rootstock, which is the right hand stem.

The graft in close-up. There's a full description of how to perform a tomato graft at http://secret-garden-club.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/how-to-graft-your-own-tomatoes-for.html. It's not technically difficult, just a bit fiddly. These plants are rather larger than you would normally graft - ideal for the ham-fisted like me.

Hard graft - working on tomatoes

I sowed the first of my tomatoes today, a variety called Aegis which will grow extremely vigorously, but bear very few fruits - and those which do develop are by all accounts bitter and inedible. The packet even comes with a warning: "This tomato is not suitable for eating or for food production".

A good thing, then, that I have no intention of growing these particular tomatoes to anything like maturity. Once germinated, these tomato seedlings will be used as rootstocks - this year I'm going to try grafting many of my tomato plants. These vigorous Aegis plants will have their tops lopped off leaving a bare stem and root, and the stem from a different variety - a variety which bears more bountiful and more flavoursome fruit - will be grafted (transplanted) on to the stem of the rootstock.

Aegis seeds being sown in modules before being covered with
compost and placed in a heated propagator to germinate.

Nearly all fruit trees sold for cultivation these days are grafted: the rootstock generally determines the size of the fully-grown tree, which is why we can grow fruiting apples, pears, etc, in a pot on the patio. The top of the tree will have been grafted on to a dwarfing rootstock, a variety which produces only a very small tree anyway. Grafted trees also typically bear fruit much more quickly - no waiting around for years until you get your first crop. Now grafted vegetables are becoming more popular - nearly every seed catalogue I received had a couple of pages of grafted plants for sale, and not just tomatoes, but aubergines, peppers, cucumbers and melons as well.

Why do this? Why take the root of one plant and meld it with the top of another? For vegetables, it's not so much a case of determining the overall size of the plant and more to do with vigour, heavy cropping and disease resistance.

Aegis rootstock from Heirloom Tomatoes - on the back of the
packet it says "not suitable for eating or for food production".

When you graft a plant you apply the characteristics of the rootstock variety to the top plant - called the scion. The tomato variety Aegis, as mentioned above, is vigorous, and also disease-resistant. For the scion - the variety you want to graft on top of the Aegis rootstock - I'm looking at varieties which might bear beautiful fruit, but which may not be overly productive and which may tend to be prone to disease. Both of these are characteristics of many heritage varieties: delicious fruit but difficult to grow satisfactorily. I'm hoping that by grafting a heritage scion on to my Aegis rootstock, I'll get a healthy, heavy-cropping tomato plant which doesn't keel over at the first sight of disease.

I haven't entirely decided which varieties I'll use for the scion and there's no harm in sowing the rootstock a few days in advance to ensure a good strong base for my heritage 'top-plants'. We're looking at tomato grafting in the Secret Garden Club at the end of March and we'll keep tabs on all our grafted plants and how they do throughout the summer. 

Pink brandywine tomatoes ready to ripen

Pear vs quince

A bit of light pruning on the pear trees today, just to remove some overcrowded branches. I’ve discovered that I have two long quince tree shoots growing from the rootstock below the graft on the Doyenne de Comice. I can't remember exactly what variety the rootstock is, Quince A I think, but it clearly wants to branch out.

Very tempted to leave them growing and have a dual species tree, half pear and half quince, but every expert I consult says the rogue shoots should be removed. Apparently they will grow more strongly that the scion and weaken the tree overall. One did suggest burying a section of one of the quince shoots in the ground to try to propagate it so that I end up with standalone quince tree as well, but since I do already have a perfectly healthy Meechin’s Prolific quince which is living up to its name I have decided against that. So I have now removed the quince shoots and will keep an eye on the base of the tree for any more.

A Victorian cherry

So my son and I finally planted our cherry tree last weekend. It arrived from Victoriana Garden Nursery back in December when the snow was on the ground and has been waiting patiently, potted up, ever since. Now at last the brambles have been hauled out, many of them tangled up with convolvulus roots snapping off everywhere. Lots of shallow-rooted nettles too to be pulled back and lifted. We’ll find out in a month or two just how well I've managed to clear the ground when the new season’s shoots start showing.

We dug a nice big square hole for the cherry and tried not to cosset it too much with compost. Son hammered in a sturdy stake for it  which is tied to the tree with a pair of old tights – good and strong, but soft so that the tie doesn’t cut into the bark of the tree. We chose the variety Stella for the tree – a reliable cropper rather than anything unusual or exotic, and it’s grafted on to Gisela 5 rootstock, so the tree won’t grow much above 9ft. Small enough for me to be able to cover with a net when the fruit come. I have my fingers crossed for blossom this spring and a small crop - even a handful of cherries would do - this summer.