Grafted Tomatoes

My friend Regina works at a wholesale nursery. Occasionally they have annual plants that get too mature for selling within the retail market. This excess inventory gets tossed onto a compost pile. When the plants happen to be edibles Regina calls me to come pick them up for the Brooklyn Community Garden. Today she called to come pick up grafted tomatoes. With Don's help and vehicle, we drove down to the nursery and stuffed his truck full of almost 100 huge grafted tomato plants.

We rode back with tomato plants hanging around in our ears. 

And what is a grafted tomato you might ask? As I understand it, the grower uses a 'secret' super rootstock onto which a tomato variety is grafted. The benefits of this process are claimed to give the tomatoes better disease resistance, improved wild weather tolerance, stronger plants, and bigger, better and longer harvests. Mighty Mato is the variety we received.

Last year I grew a grafted Green Zebra tomato and also grew a regular Green Zebra. Disappointingly, my  grafted plant didn't produce as well as the regular one. Regina had the same experience with this variety, however a number of other gardeners have had spectacular success with this product. Maybe the Green Zebra variety was the problem not the grafting. This season I'm growing 2 different varieties, and will keep track of how they do.

The community garden may hold a tomato tasting festival come September to compare notes. Stay tuned.

Jade picking out her grafted tomato plant.

So thanks Regina and F&B Farms for the great donation to our community garden.