Our “Grafted Tomato” Garden.
- Garden Club of Wiscasset
- Jul 2
- 2 min read
By: Tina Sedney
Grafting is the act of splicing together two different plants of the same species. This allows the gardener to reap the benefits of the rootstock variety.
All of our grafted tomato plants are supported (hung) from above using string trellises. The string trellis is composed of a “Rollerhook” string spool hung about 12 feet above the ground.
“Tomato clips” are attached securely to the string and each tomato clip is placed just below a sturdy tomato branch. The tomato clips support the weight of several mature tomato clusters from above.
As the tomato clusters are harvested from the bottom of the plants, the entire tomato plant is lowered (via the Rollerhook) to the ground. The harvested tomato plant stems can be coiled on the ground around each tomato plant. This enables season-long growth and harvesting of 12 to 20 feet of total tomato plant growth. Each of our grafted tomato plants (currently we have 56 GRAFTED tomato plants) has "doubled main stems" ... This means we trellis 112 tomato plant stems. All our favorite tomato varieties (scions) plants are grafted onto “Maxifort” tomato rootstock. The Maxifort rootstock seeds were developed by breeding preferred traits from wild tomato vines from the Andes Mts.
Grafted tomato plants require more labor. However, most studies have found that grafted tomato plants produce significantly more marketable fruit and the production costs are significantly lower than conventional growing methods. In one study (Fortamine rootstock with Muskich scion) the non-grafted plants yielded an average of 5.5 lbs. per plant and the grafted plants yielded an average of 9.3 lbs. per plant.
We have been growing tomatoes this way for about 25 years. We owned and operated a vegetable farm in Vermont for about 20 years. We always hoped for 10 or more full tomato clusters per plant (each season) with a “Fruit Set per Truss” of 6-8 mature (market size) fruits developing per truss.
Most commercially grown tomatoes are grafted tomatoes. (Read about GRAFTING by clicking on the URLs below).
We irrigate 6 different garden zones with synchronized timers. During most years, we try to donate about half of our garden’s produce (tomatoes, highbush blueberries, summer squash, cucumbers, beans, eggplant, peppers) to the Brunswick Food Bank (MCHPP).
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