Forty grafts done. That’s eighteen of cultivars for my unheated greenhouse (I finished getting them in today) and six duplicates for the poly-tunnel at the market gardeners. Plus sixteen of supposedly Blight Resistant cultivars to trial in the open garden and allotment.
The success rate with grafting was much better for later batches. Maybe because the days are now considerably longer.
I managed to get four grafted plants from each of the FortaminoF1 seedlings and also retained the mother plants as cuttings. So I stand a chance of getting some back-crossed seed for next year.
Most of the graft unions look nice and neat, tho’ I have some oddities. In the past I’ve not found ugly grafts to be predictive of poor yields, however I will keep a special eye on these fellows. I did consider culling the one below, … BUT … the rootstocks I want are ones that protect my scions from soil born diseases, rather than ones which make nice looking graft unions. … This one may yet be a winner! (The two stems were the same size when I spliced them!)
There is a fair degree of variability in the stem colour and hairiness of the F2 rootstocks. So I guess that indicates that FortaminoF1 is, what one might call, a real F1, with diverse parents.