Playing around with veggie grafts for the second season. This was partly inspired by Mark W. Kidd posting about the increased vigor gained by grafting eggplant onto litchi tomato. There is also increased disease resistance and yield. Some research shows that the seedlings from wide grafts also show heterosis or hybrid vigor. The other one is a litchi tomato grafted onto physalis peruviana.
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That’s really interesting! Can I ask what your process is for these?
Wow, really nice! Thank you for posting this.
Neither litchi nor horsenettle did well for me indoors, but I have about six small eggplants from that project which should include African and east Asian types.
You are inspiring me to re-engage with that effort. I grew up eating a very limited range of Solanaceae for such a diverse family.
Good luck with these grafts, I look forward to hearing about what happens next.
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These are basic whip grafts sealed with super glue. With veggie grafts you do 48 hours dark and high humidity. If it’s cold you can add a heat mat during that time. Then you gradually increase the light intensity over a few days and lower the humidity to ambient levels over a 2 week period. The whip graft is for when the scion and rootstock diameters are the same, but I prefer the plug graft where you start the rootstock earlier so it’s thicker. Then it’s much easier to make the graft by simply drilling a little hole in the rootstock.
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After reading the study you posted it made me want to to see if putting eggplant on litchi would give it the vigor needed to outrun the flea beetles. Eggplant is one of the least successful crops I’ve tried because it needs a lot of care to thrive here. I got a couple ungrafed African eggplant seedlings going too, but they seem more finicky than the Asian ones so far.
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I also wonder if having eggplant grow on litchi could allow it some protection in situations with high animal browse pressure
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Thank you much. I’ve heard of veggie grafts before and am especially interested in the potential of interfamilial grafts, with or without tobacco as an interscion. I’m pretty sure I heard about those for the first time on this forum too. All veggie grafts are still kind of magic to me at this point - - happy to hear of these efforts 