- What if I told you that one of the best ways to grow a tomato is to grow two tomatoes and use the top of one with
the bottom of the other? That's what we're doing in
today's video, my friend's. Grafting tomatoes. Something that is super
exciting for me as a gardener. It's something I've done in the orchard. It's very common in the
orchard, but it is less common in the vegetable garden,
unless you are a farmer. So I figured why not bring
it to us here at home? It's starting to get a
little bit more popular. So let's first discuss what is grafting. Put very simply it is when you are taking plant material from one plant,
usually a related plant, it can't really do it if it's not, and putting it onto another plant. Where you see this in
the wild, so to speak, is in the Home Orchard where you can grow these fruit salad trees with
multiple different types of stone fruit, where you can graft different citrus. Or like I've done in my orchard, grafting different types of
figs onto the same fig tree. But you can do it with tomatoes. The question is why? What I have in front of me
here is the Fortamino tomato. Now, believe it or not, I
don't care about anything you see coming out of the soil here. With the Fortamino tomato I care about the rootstock. So basically everything below the soil, and a little bit of this stem. Why? It's because the Fortamino tomato is really designed to have
another tomato put on top of it. What it's gonna offer, that
lucky tomato that goes on top, is more leaf cover to prevent sun scald, prevention against things
like fusarium wilt, even more tomatoes per truss. So you're gonna get more
yield out of the same tomato. So in this video both Jacques
and myself are gonna show you how we graft our tomatoes from simple to a little bit more complicated, and then exactly what to do afterwards so this little guy right here doesn't die the second you graft it. So let's get started with
the grafting process. What you're going to need are
a grafting rootstock tomato. We have the Fortamino tomato from Botanical Interests,
our seed company. But you also need the
tomato you want to graft. This is the one that you
actually want to grow and you want to eat. In my case here I have Cherokee Carbon. Kind of funny, that's already
a hybridized heirloom tomato. Cherokee Purple is the classic heirloom. It's been crossed with carbon
to provide a more vigorous, a more resilient plant. But I figured why not get even crazier and graft it onto something. So we're sort of looking
at this mix of two plants, then graft it onto a third tomato plants. We're getting a little crazy here. Now, gear wise, you can
get away with something as simple as just one of these razors. Now I'm gonna show you a piece
of gear that I'm gonna use for the first example,
because it's very precise. So this is an actual
tomato grafting tool set. We'll put a link on where to get these in the description. You've got these little stakes, and then you've got this clip. This clip is what's going
to actually make sure that those grafts are held
together at the graft point. That's really all you need. Again, you could get away with a little bit of grafting
tape and just a razor. So, how do you actually do this? There are two primary styles of grafting. I'm gonna show you the first one, Jacques gonna show you the second one. The first one is a top graft. And what you're doing is
you're cutting the top off of the one you want to grow
at a very specific angle, which you'll see, and
grafting it at the same angle. This right here is the
one I want to graft. And I also have the Fortamino rootstock. I want to graft two. It doesn't really matter
which one I cut first. What does matter though is that the stem diameter is
pretty much the exact same, as well as the cut
angle is the exact same. That's where this particular
tool is kind of nice because you've got this razor here to make a nice clean cut, but you also have this little channel here that keeps the stem at a consistent angle. So I'm cutting at about a
60 degree angle both times. Again, you could eyeball this too. I'm just gonna show you the tool 'cause honestly I love these tools. It's really handy to use. So what I want to do is decide am I gonna go below the seed leaves here, or am I gonna go above? In my case right here I want to go below because I need to match the stem width. And in this case it's a
little thicker down here. I'm gonna match it to about right there. Step one, we're gonna
come in with our tool. We're gonna match the tomato stem into this little cutting channel here. I'm gonna go low because I
want that width on the stem. And then the painful part, quick clip. So I have this beautiful,
clean angle right here, exactly what I want. No blemishes, perfectly clean. We're gonna bring forward
our rootstock tomato. What I'm gonna do here is try to match, it's roughly about there or so, and I'll describe a problem
that you're gonna run into here in a second. But I'm gonna go for the cut. There we go. Now in this case I didn't
perfectly match these, but I think I'm still gonna be okay. So what I want to do now is I'm
gonna grab this little clip, this little attachment clip,
and I'm gonna slide in the top into this clip right here. And then what I want to
do is come on this side and perfectly match this to that cut. So there you go. You can tell by the color difference that I've made that graft. And then the nice thing
about these particular clips is you've got this little popsicle stick I can throw down here to adhere it and make it go straight up like that. Something interesting about
this particular graft, I could have even
improved on this further, is you'll notice I actually
have two sets of seed leaves, which means that in
this section right here I have the potential
for the rootstock tomato to throw out suckers, right? So you're gonna need to
watch that graft point. Below the graft point you wanna remove 100% of the suckers, otherwise you're gonna get tomatoes off of the Fortamino rootstock. So anything below here, remove. Right here and above, I'm gonna be fine. But I still, for tomato pruning reasons, may want to remove those suckers. So I'm gonna do one more. If you want to do a graft that avoids the problem I just mentioned, it's actually really easy and solved by just knowing a little
bit of the plant's anatomy. So I'm gonna come in right here and come below those seed
leaves, as you can see. Same angle. So now I have the seed
leaves of this plant, which is very similar
to what I did before. The only difference here is
on this particular rootstock I'm gonna go also below the seed leaves. So I avoid that problem altogether. So I want to come in just like that. So I'm using almost none
of the top growth here. I'm gonna use the same
technique right here. I'm slotting this in just like that, and I'm meeting it just like that. So it's low, but trust me, it is slotted in absolutely perfectly. Those angles matched up very well, even better than my last graft. And then you want to just come in again and throw down your stake to
keep these nice and steady. So there I go. And I don't have to
worry now about anything from the rootstock sprouting up because I only have seed leaves
from my top grafted tomato. What if you have tomatoes that are a little bit older like this? Well, you can still graft them, and you may want to use
a different technique. So these actually aren't my tomatoes, these are Jacques tomatoes,
and he's gonna show you how to do what's called a cleft graft using more basic tools
like a standard razor, and some stuff that you can find at home. - As Kevin mentioned, once
you get bigger tomatoes you're gonna want to
try a different graft, like the cleft graft. Now this is an interesting one because you're basically
just going to jam the scion into the rootstock. So let's take a look at the
Fortamino rootstock first. These are mine right now. They're quite big, and honestly everything
should have been planted probably a week ago. So let's see if we could
still make this work. I'm not entirely sure if
it's gonna work at this size, but I'm definitely willing to try. So in this case we're going to
be using just the razor blade and nothing else really. So to start it off I guess I'll just kind
of choose one of these. Might as well be this guy up here. I want this nice straight portion here, so I'm gonna come right
here and just literally take a straight cut across. There we go. So that's going to be where
we're actually grafting onto. Now the way that the cleft works is that what I'm going to
do now is take my knife and go straight down the middle, little less than 1/2 inch there. So now I have created
a sort of wedge point where I could put my scion into it. So I'm gonna go with this one here, which is the Omar's Lebanese. This is a tomato that I
really quite enjoy eating. It is a classic heirloom, so
it doesn't produce very much. And so this year I'm hoping
I'll get more out of it by grafting it. Now I do wanna find a section of the stem that is about the same thickness. Now the nice thing
about this graft is that let's say I'm trying to match this height. I don't have to come to the
base of the tomato plant, I could just work my way up
until I get a similar diameter. So in this case, on this tomato, I'm gonna just decapitate it right here. And now the cool thing is I could still keep the original scion, and
this will actually still grow and just produce a liter off
of this notch right here. And that's gonna be another tomato for me. So I'm not actually losing
anything with this graft. So then the next thing I'm gonna do is take off some of
these leaves like that, just because any extra
leaf that I leave on there is an extra leaf that
the plant has to support. Now this is where it
gets a little bit weird. This is where we're going
to carve this tomato into basically a flathead
screwdriver shape. So what I'm going to do is take my blade and try to just take a slice off like so. Come on the other side. And now I think that's too sharp, so I wanna make that a little
bit of a longer sort of point. So there we go. So now I have this sort of screwdriver bit looking section here. So now I'm going to take the scion, try to ease it right into
that notch, just like that. So that actually looks
pretty convincing to me. And I don't know if these clips
are gonna be the right size, but I'm gonna go ahead and try anyway. And actually that does do something. So that's an option right there is you can use that clip to
sort of keep it together. But I wanna also try
doing it with something like a piece of clear grafting tape, or this is like something
that you would use to tie your plants. So let's try doing one more, and we'll see if we could
do a cleaner matchup here. And now the next tomato
I'm gonna graft here is the Delicious Hunt. This is the tomato that I actually got a three-pound tomato off of. So why not try to actually
make it even better by putting it on a nice rootstock. Give it a chop. Come back down, take these leaves off. And this time I'm gonna lay it down here so I could try to get this cut
a little bit more carefully. There we go. Got a decent cut there,
and slide it right in. Alright. Now I'm gonna grab my tape. It's not gonna look
pretty, but the idea is that I just want it to
keep the moisture in. And so even if it's loose, it's still going to be
keeping that moisture in and keeping that graft contact tight. Alright, so there's two cleft graphs. We'll see if it works. I don't know if it works
at the size tomato, but now we need to talk
about how to actually heal these graphs once
you've completed them. - Now that you know how to graft in a variety of different ways, it's really important to know
what to do after you graft. In fact, I would almost
say it's more important because at this point is really the point most of us are going to kill our grafts. Ask me how I know. I've done it a million times, specifically in my orchards. So at this point we're gonna need some kind of humidity dome. Because we're using our Epic 4-Cells, we're just gonna use our 4-Cell domes. I'm gonna have a humidity
little sprayer here. I'm gonna blast the inside. I'm gonna blast the plants themselves. You need to keep humidity
at this point above 90%, nearly at 100. And so I'm just gonna kind
of tease my plants in here. Be very sensitive. You can see they're
already wanting to wilt. This is why this is so important because they're effectively
completely severed from their root system until such point that they actually do take that graft. And then nutrients can actually transport through the fused grafting
point, as well as water. And so that's why the
humidity is so important. It's much like taking a cutting. And in that same vein at the graft point, you might even start
to see what are called adventitious roots come out. That is what happens specifically, even with something like tomatoes, you'll start to see roots come out. It's why they're so easy to propagate. So the next thing you need is darkness. In my case what I'm gonna do is throw this on the
bottom of my greenhouse, cover it with something like shade cloth. I want it in the greenhouse 'cause I want 70 to 85 degrees fahrenheit
with that 90% humidity. Now as it starts to set and that graph starts to fuse together, you can actually take the
tip off here a little bit, let a little bit of that humidity out. Maybe remove the shade cloth, but keep it in filtered sun or shade. And then eventually, maybe at the five to seven
to eight, nine day mark, you can remove this, take a look at how they're doing. If they're wilting, increase the humidity. If they're stretching, increase the light. And there you go. At that point it's gonna be time to plant. A few weeks ago we did our first graft here at Epic Gardening,
and I'm happy to say that it took like a charm. You can see it right here. This is the rootstock, this is the top. And you can even see
some roots forming here, which is a good sign
that the graft has taken, as well as the fact that
it is just very fused. I could sort of pull up on the top here and it is not removing
itself from the rootstock, but it's at this point, my friends, where you can really mess up. You've spent all the time
to graft this tomato, the TLC to make sure
that this is done right. And if you plant it like you often see tomatoes recommended to be planted, which is burying it really deep, you can just completely negate
all the work that you did. Why? Well, what do you want to grow? The rootstock. If you planted it up to
here, then you're actually going to be growing adventitious
roots out of the top, which is what you don't want. And so when you're taking
this out into the ground, just plant it right here. Don't bury it, don't sink it down, don't clip leaves off. Just plant it exactly as it is. And if it's a little tall, just
use a support to hold it up. Tomato grafting is super fun. It's a little more complex. You'll see over the course
of our growing season here how ours have done. And if you're curious what
to do after this point, there's a lot of tomato
care that's yet to come, especially pruning. So check out our Pruning Guide. It is the ultimate tomato
pruning guide right here. Shop our seeds. The Fortamino rootstock, for example, is available at botanicalinterests.com. Good luck in the garden, and keep on growing.
