g'day fluff,

not sure but is wild tobacco a true tobacco? true tobacco as far as i know is a relative of the tomato and capsicums etc.,. as they where all derived from the nightshade family if a remember it right?

anyhow back to your experiment, 30 or 40 years ago the csiro or dpi where working on a project of attempting to graft tomatoes to wild tobacco stock, the thought being to get drought resistant plants or drought tollerant plants, i think maybe it didn't work because i have never heard anymore about the subject.

i'm not into grafting hey i can't even make a cutting (stick) grow hey lol? but most grafters use a special tape to bind the graft and some use a special glue substance? (saw this on a grape graft once) and i always thought the purpose was to keep the graft dry not wet?

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

hi fluf, I have some experience on the subject. If by wild tobacco you mean Solanum mauritianum, then yes, it is Solanaceae and yes you can graft tomatoes and eggplant onto it quite easily. I've seen eggplant grafted onto them growing beautifully, quite a site to see a 10ft tall 'tree' with eggplants hanging from the branches.

Here's what you need to do. Choose a healthy stem from your tomato/eggplant (scion) which is about the same diameter as the stem you want to graft onto. Cut the end of your scion into a long tapering wedge with a clean sharp blade. Immediately make a split in the rootstock stem a little bit longer than the wedge on the scion. Insert the scion into this split, taking care to line up the cortex (bark parts) on at least one side. It's better to have it off centre and have one side line up than neither, but if you can have both sides lining up that is ideal. Starting above the graft on the scion, bind the grafted area completely with teflon plumbers tape (the white stretchy stuff). Bind over the graft and some distance below and above it to protect it from disease and drying out. That's it, if you're lucky the graft should take.

Good luck. :)

Thanks. I'm not sure what type of tobacco it is, bit I was told by a fruit farmer that it was the right variety and I have had a bit of luck with one surviving a few months. I also checked with a biologist and he said it was wild tobacco and a member of the deadly night shade family. So far I was just trying to attach seedling stems to a slit in the bark. I hadn't thought to try replacing the whole stem - like you do with fruit trees. Now I just need a thicker tomato stem.

Should I put the scion in water while I am making the cut in the rootstock?

g'day fluff,

likely to be this one 'Tobacco bush  ÂSolanum mauritianumÂ'

len

Good luck with your experiment fluff. I saw, on TV, both eggplant and tomato grafted onto a smallish tree. I always thought it was Tamarillo but it may well have been tobacco. As Jamus says, it's quite a sight.
And yes, I think the scion's cut end should be in water until 'attached'.

Raymondo refreshed my memory: there was a segment on Gardening Australia (both TV and magazine) on grafting eggplant onto a Solanum sp. It wasn't Wild Tobacco but that one would work just as well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Grafting tomato

I had a go, but I thought they all died. Last week I went to try another batch, and discovered that one of the tomato bits was still green. So I cut all the remaining tobacco leaves off that area and the tomato graft has started to grow! Very slowly at the moment. Fingers crossed.

that's great fluff,

keep us posted hey, me i'm no grafter flat out getting seeds to germinate, can't make a stick grow either, but very interested in your achievements, maybe come over to

ausgarden, and let the gardeners over there know as well?

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

I've now got two tomato grafts growing well, one quite bushy. I'll have to support it soon and fence out the possums. They both have flowers, but no fruit yet.

great stuff fluff,

if you want to sort of document what you are doing and with your permission i'll feature that on my site pics and all, to show others your successes and to encourage others. nothing like personnal hands on experiences. or if you put it on your own blog page on one of the many sites available i will link to it.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

I have fruit that is ready to pick. Only problem is now I'm not sure if it is safe to eat. I had a bit of a search on google and found references to poisonous tomatoes from grafts onto other plants. Also, apparently when you grat tomato onto potato the fruit tastes bad.

g'day fluff,

it's all in the tasting of the fruit i might say hey fluff?

maybe select a nice very ripe piece of fruit before picking it and eat a very small amount and wait and see what happens usually if something bad is going to happen it will occur in app' 15 minutes, tomatoes all started life as dangerous to eat nightshades family.

keep us informed.

be interesting to see what you get from the seeds hey?

then maybe x-pollinate to a known good fruit and see what you get then? could have those drought proof qualitites that the tobacco has.

len

how about some pic's?

len

I ate one this morning, and I am still alive. I rubbed it on my lips first and my top lip stung a little bit, but I think that would just be from the acid in the tomato.

I finally got some pictures up. Sorry it took so long, but I wanted to wait until I could give our new website a plug at the same time ;) Plus, I just did a few more grafts yesterday. They weren't looking very healthy this morning, probably because I wasted so much time taking the photos. I have got three ripe cherry tomatoes off it so far.

Any feedback on the website would be appreciated.

http://www.ozpolitic.com/gardening/grafting-tomatoes-wild-tobacco.html

Here is a link that might be useful: the photos

g'day fluff,

the pic's look great hey?

i will link to yor page from my garden page so others may be inspired.

if i may i would like to encourage yo to creating your own page ie.,. like mine. that way you have a clean page with no ad's and it is yours.

creating a web page is easy there are page generators (programs) that will do it automatically for you, then once you create the page offline and have it ready to go then you talk to your isp about accessing the free web space they have allocated for you, if you have m$ frontpage on your computer that is a web page generator and it comes with a built in WSFTP program so you can upload your page to the web.

i don't use page generators as i learnt the harder way not difficult but takes a bit more brain power you might say, that way i am in control of all codes that go into making the page (codes are what makes the page work and are hidden when you open up a web page).

but anyway just some encouragement.

if you wish to get an idea what i mean about codes and how a page is set up behind the scenes so to speak! if you open say our web page then go to the menu bar click 'view' then click 'source' or 'page source' depends whether you use m$ie or firefox, that will show you all the codes behind our page.

domain names are cheap enough nowadays costing around $19 per annum.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

Thanks for the tip. I am learning ht ml at the moment. I'm also getting stuck into using external c ss and java script files, but I'm having a bit of trouble with the latter.

Also, thanks for putting up the link. Let me know when it is updated and I'll put up a reciprocal link for you.

g'day fluff,

that's done mate.

dunno nothing about java script files??? me i keeps it simple.

len

I can't seem to find it. What page is it on?

building a garden page

len

I've put in the reciprocal link. Let me know if you want to set up any others.