AdAgrA 2021: Hidden Treasure

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Special Interests

Rob Norris

Plant Propagation by Cuttings

We'll talk about cloning as also a very effective means of increasing your production.

Cuttings, division, layering, and even grafting.

I'll talk about a couple of these just by way of introduction cloning Which is asexual reproduction we by that we mean it's reproducing the same genetics of our original parent plant We're not mixing chromosomes.

We're not mixing genetics A really good example of why we do this is, for instance, in the mint family, there are many, many different varieties of mint.

And if you start mint from a seed, mint cross-pollinates so easy that you almost never get a mint true to type.

So, back home, I've got a greenhouse business.

I sell veggie starts and herbs at the farmer's market.

So coming back to this mint, there are many varieties of, say, peppermint, but there's very, very few really, really nice varieties of peppermint.

A good variety of peppermint is gonna just grab you by the ears and shake you because it smells like a peppermint, like a candy cane factory.

It's just, it's cool, it's crisp, and it's sweet.

When you find that peppermint plant, you want to save that plant and reproduce its genetics.

I've got a mint that's called strawberry mint.

It's a little more demure and just kind of retiring, kind of an introvert plant.

Not really aggressive as the mints usually are, but it smells like bananas.

So when you find just that 1 special plant, you wanna be able to reproduce that 1.

Well, like I said, we can do this by cuttings, which is usually taking just the tip of our plant, or by taking side shoots.

We can do this by division, simply dividing a clumping plant into multiple sections, layering.

Layering is simply taking a shoot from the plant and rooting it before we take it off the parent plant.

Divisions, like I said, it's simply, I've got this plant, it's in the garden or it's in a pot, but it's too crowded.

And with divisions on a clumping plant, we just simply either use a shovel or by hand, and if it's in a small pot, we can just pull it apart into 2 pieces.

Or we can dig it up and we can pull it apart completely down to the individual shoot, and sometimes we can get hundreds of plants.

A few years ago, I dug up a Siberian iris.

It's a black Siberian iris that I had in my mom's flower bed.

And it was a clump about that big around.

I wanted it for farmers markets, So I dug up that clump that was about this big around, down into individual shoots, and I made about 200 gallon pots of plants.

So, you know, it's gonna take a couple years for that to grow up and make a nice, thick, full plant.

The simplest way is to take a long branch or shoot and lay it down on the ground, pin it to the ground and put a shovel full of dirt over that stem.

In about a season or so, it will grow roots, and then once it's got its own roots, cut it off the parent plant, dig it up, and transplant it elsewhere.

Another way of doing layering, what's called air layering, is skin off some of the bark in about an inch of the stem, maybe down however long you want that cutting to be.

I've done this with blueberries, and just come about a foot down from the tip of the branch, skin the bark off, and then take a, basically you're kind of making a hot dog, with a piece of plastic and some potting soil, and just wrap that around that scraping, and then tie it off on either side so the plastic kind of encases that potting soil.

And in about a season or so over the course of, say, a summer, that will grow roots, and towards the end of the season, you're peeking into the plastic.

If you see those roots in there, go ahead and cut it off and transplant it wherever you'd like it.

Don't want to go into that too much, but coming back to the basics of cuttings.

Herbaceous versus perennial woody cuttings.

I want to talk about rooting hormone, tools, tray sizes, creating environmental conditions that are conducive to good rooting.

I'll talk about mother stock and about timing.

So, we'll start off with herbaceous cuttings.

What I'm looking for is to get typically the shoot of a plant, inch and a half, or anywhere from about a half inch to 2 inches long.

If you notice, right outside this building, there's a big rosemary bush.

Well, the plant is dormant right now, so it wouldn't make very good cuttings.

It tends to be very woody, right up to about an inch of the tip of that stem.

It wouldn't make good cuttings right now.

What makes the very best cuttings is in the spring, when you're starting to get that first flush of new tender growth.

Usually those first shoots that come out are the thickest stems, they're just the heaviest cuttings.

And the reason why is that the tissue of that plant in that fresh vegetative stage is still able to change from stem cell growth and switching over to becoming root cells.

That fresh tender growth just makes that transfer real easily, very streamlined.

Whereas when it's old and woody, it becomes a lot more difficult to switch gears genetically and go from stem cells to root cells.

So, whether it's an annual or a perennial, I want that fresh new growth.

So if you look at this plant, Anybody know what this plant is?

It's rosemary, but if you see what has happened on this plant, it's almost done blooming.

After it gets done flowering, it's going into a vegetative state, vegetative growth.

Plants, like animals, like people, when it's in reproductive mode, nothing else will get done.

So after it starts getting out of that reproductive mode, it will start growing, and that's where you get this flush of green growth.

And if you notice the color on those shoots, what color?

Kind of that bright lime, fast-growing, we're happy about life.

Examples of things that cut very well, Basil, catnip, chamomile, fuchsia.

I wouldn't worry about writing all this down, but you can see fuchsia's lavender, lemon balm, lemon verbena.

How many of you are familiar with lemon verbena?

How many of you, just throw this out, how many of you like saffron rice?

Okay, next year, plant some lemon verbena and dice it up and put it in your saffron rice.

It looks pretty because the saffron rice is gold, right?

And the bright green lemon verbena leaves in there, it's just the green and the gold is a very pretty dish, and it just gives it just a hint of lemon.

Rosemary, sage, winter savory, stevia, just so many different kinds of things that you can do by cuttings.

The 2 on that list, lavender and rosemary, are just a little bit harder than everything else, but completely doable once you get the conditions just right.

So what I'm looking for on what I would consider on average the most perfect cutting is I'm wanting about an inch to an inch and a half of the tip of that plant.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut that plant, I'm gonna come down about an inch, inch and a half, and I'm gonna cut about a quarter to three-eighths of an inch below the last set of leaves that are left on that little cutting.

And if you notice, I've pulled that last set of leaves off on this cutting, which happens to be a spearmint, and you notice the cut is about a quarter of an inch below that last set of leaves.

Chantee Fisher

Luke Fisher

Grafting Tomatoes

This is my wife Shante And we are from Bristow, Oklahoma.

We grow we have a couple high tunnels that we grow tomatoes in every year and we've been grafting tomatoes for the last number of years.

But before we get any further along, let's have a word of prayer.

Dear Lord, thank you for the opportunity to come here to meet together, to share, to learn.

And we ask that you would bless this class, and may it be profitable to those present.

So I had a few pictures, but I'm not sure where the HDMI cord is on this setup, but we'll get by without them.

We take a disease resistant vigorous rootstock and what they do for tomatoes is they do a wide cross between a conventional tomato and a wild tomato relative.

It's a wide cross that That so they like some a jungle vine tomato and a typical tomato They hybridize those and select for disease resistance and vigor taking no account for fruit quality so Root stock tomato will make little green berries that never get red, never taste good, never...

But we'll accidentally drop some or they've naturalized in our seed starting house or something.

And we'll have a few plants that will, they'll grow and flourish all season never being watered, right out among the weeds and grass and just grow a big nice bush with little green berries on it.

So they're quite impressive tomato plants, except for they don't have good fruit.

So what we do is we cut the top off, we cut the top off of the tomato we want to eat and the top off of the root stock and then we mix match the roots with the top.

There are 2, the typical method is called a Top graph a splice graph and you just cut at about a 60 degree angle right across the top of both of those Clip them together with some little silicone clips They're in a basket around here somewhere.

Yeah see I don't know if you can see that picture or not.

Can you, it's kind of small but you'll be able to look at the in-person things here in a bit.

Now The another reason why we do it in addition to these disease resistance is that increased?

Vigor and longevity just from the vigor of the roots Typically you hope to get about a 50% increase in production over over in a typical short unheated high tunnel season.

So for example some common varieties like Big Beef and Geronimo you might get 17 pounds per plant un-grafted and 29 pounds per plant grafted.

That's according to 1 of Johnny's high tunnel tomato grafting trials.

Really I'll tell you how I learned how to graft tomatoes.

I went to Johnnyseeds.com, went to their grower library and watched their little video on how to graft tomatoes and then tried it myself.

And so that's everything I know about grafting tomatoes I just learned from doing that and you can go do that too.

If you order, I, there's several typical rootstock tomato seeds.

We usually get ours from Johnny's and we'll talk about those, but if you order those seeds they'll mail you with the seeds a whole packet with all the instructions on how to graft your tomatoes, how to heal them, all the whole process.

And I'm not going to be able to teach you anything more than I learned from those.

Plus, I mean, I can, we'll share our experience.

I want to say that in our experience, grafting is a mixture of an art and a science.

And the actual grafting I think is the simple part.

In our operation, I usually do all the grafting because having smaller fingers is easier when you're dealing with little plants and he does all the recovery but to be honest the recovery is much more challenging than the actual grafting.

You want to do the grafting properly and it'll make the recovery easier but the recovery time is is where you really need to And I feel like this is where experience does help because you get to learn what signs your little tomato plants are giving off and what to do about them.

And though it's extremely helpful to like go to the Johnny's website and read and you can't just follow all the instructions and know that for sure your grafted tomatoes are gonna turn out perfect.

You really just need to do it and learn it and as they'll say on the Johnny's website you just have to do a lot of fiddling and fiddle and fiddle and fiddle and you'll start to learn.

You'll start to learn and be able to have better and better success.

So we're gonna share a few tricks of the trade, something from our experience.

And that starts with starting your seedlings.

I don't know, I think Shante, can you walk around with some of these packets?

And you'll be able to, oh, that one's a whole tray stuck together.

These are rootstock tomatoes, they look different.

This is estomino, estomino, estomino, I don't know how to pronounce it exactly, and big beef.

Now Do you see these small little tomato plants here?

Do you what do you notice about the difference between?

The big beefs and the green zebras well the big beefs are bigger than the green zebras are they were started the same day yeah I started these about 3 weeks ago been growing them under grow lights it's a little bit early season for starting tomatoes We'll talk about our timeline in a bit.

But basically different tomatoes sprout and grow at different rates.

Now there's several rootstocks I'll talk about.

The common ones, if you're buying from Johnny's, they sell 3 different ones right now.

They are Maxifort, Estimino, and DRO1F4, some numbers, it's just a number 1.

And they have different growth characteristics.

And you want your stems to be the same size when you go to graft.

So 1 thing that you'll want to do is do a test germination a few weeks before to see how fast all your seeds are sprouting, how vigorous they're growing.

So then you'll know, okay, Estamina we need to start 3 days ahead of Big Beef if we want them the same size when we go to graft but maybe the the only 1 day ahead for green zebra for instance.

So that's 1 tip is knowing that you're knowing the sprouting growing qualities of your tomatoes.

The DR-14X whatever that 1 is it's a vigorous fast vigorous sprouter you probably started the same day as big beef and it will keep up.

Maxifort is very uneven germination some will sprout soon some will sprout later You probably want to do multiple seedings of your top plant to match your uneven germination of your bottom plant.

Estamino just as slow sprouter but it's fairly even more even than the than the Maxifort.

The other thing is choosing your rootstock and you're gonna choose your rootstock I don't know how many of you grown tomatoes before.

So there's something that we have to consider called the balance of the plant, vegetative versus generative.

The generative side is the fruit, the vegetative side is the leaves and stems.

And if you have it too vegetative, it makes a big plant with very few fruits.

And the ones that are there take a long time to get ripe.

If you have it too generative, it'll make fruit early, but won't put any energy into growing the stem taller.

And it'll peter out and not make very many fruits just a few early to get ripe but the plant doesn't have a long season.

So if you balance those you make fruits and keep growing, make fruits keep growing, make fruits keep growing and that's what you're seeking if you're doing, want to do a longer season of tomatoes.

Typically we're grafting indeterminate tomatoes that are trellised in some way so we get a longer season.

These will get 12 feet, 15 feet, We can't reach those so we have to lower them and lean them.

Or you might just grow them to 8 feet and cut them off, you know.

So you have to then match the natural vigor of the top with the vigor of the bottom.

So the the rootstock estamina that we're using right here is a generative rootstock that is better for a short or medium season not for a 12 month heated greenhouse production.

Except for a few cases some naturally vigorous Heirloom type or cherry tomato type tops cherry tomatoes you want to put them on on to estamina or other another Generative rootstock If you put them on to Maxifort which is a super vegetative they'll just be such long vines that they won't you won't know what to do with them.

Some like Johnny's recommends if you look at if you're if you peruse the Johnny's website They have an heirloom hybrid series the Marbon Marnero Margold those are Naturally vigorous plants that do well balanced on to estamina rootstock Some of the other if you're but if you're doing if you got a long season big you grow on big tomatoes and people will grow Maxifort or a medium length the DRO1 number rootstock that they sell is kind of in between.

It's a vigorous but easier to balance rootstock.

We almost use all Estomino, though I think we will try some of the medium ones as well this year as well.

So choosing your rootstock, getting your seeds started, the right timing, when to start your seeds.

Grafting is gonna set your plants back a full week compared to, So if you know when you want to put your tomatoes out into the garden from a normal seedling, you want to start a week sooner than that.

Because the whole healing grafting process is going to set the plants back a week in timing.

We put our tomatoes out into unheated high tunnel between mid-march and 1st of April in Oklahoma we're still at risk for frost even in a tunnel It's we have that sometimes may need to cover them with row covers there, but that's our target A lot of growers will pot their plants up after they're grafted into 4 inch pot or 4 and a half inch pot and they can keep them for a few weeks after grafting in that before they need to go out.

Seth Shaffer

Cover Cropping: A Tool to Rebuild and Restore Your Soil

Alright, so to start off I wanted to ask a question.

How many of you are currently actively using cover crops on your farms?

Hopefully by the time this presentation is done we will all have learned something new about cover cropping and its role in rebuilding and restoring the soil.

So cover crops are 1 of the easiest and primary means of soil fertility for farmers as well as nutrient management.

So cover crops help to do a number of different things for our soil.

They help to prevent erosion, they restore nutrients back to the soil, and they keep living roots in the soil before, during, and after our cash crops.

Cash crops would be anything that you're planting for a crop to take to market or for home use.

So I want you to think of the soil like your bank account.

If all you ever do with your bank account is pull money out, what's going to happen?

You're going to go broke sooner or later.

All soils come with a certain amount of nutrients already there.

Sometimes it's a greater amount, sometimes it's a lesser amount, depending on where you are in the country and what has happened to that soil before you got to it and started using it.

So, with every crop that you plant and you harvest, you're removing nutrients.

So, unlike the bank, I can't just go to my soil and drop $100 on it and I've replenished the nutrients.

So 1 of the methods of returning nutrients to the soil is cover cropping.

Now it is true that you can apply synthetic fertilizers to your fields to help deal with some fertility loss.

The problem with that is that any synthetic fertilizers that you're adding to your fields, all they're doing is feeding the plants themselves.

They are doing nothing to help out the biological life in the soil.

And the way that we want to deal with our soils and our crops is we want to make sure that we feed the soil first.

The soil will take care of feeding our crops, and then our crops will take care of feeding us.

So if you remember nothing else from today's presentation, I want you to remember that to have an effective cover crop stand, you really need 2 types of cover crops.

You need a legume and you need some type of grass and this will take care of the majority of your nutrient needs.

And yes you can get more much more complicated in your cover crop blends but this is a good place to start off with.

So for starters, I'm gonna talk briefly about the soil, and then we're gonna dive in to cover cropping and their role with the soil.

So as we are all probably aware, Soil has 3 main components.

It has a physical component, it has a biological component, and it has a physical component to it.

So the biological component, I would say, is probably 1 of the primary areas of the soil that we should be focusing on.

But it is, I would say, equally important to focus also on the chemical and the physical sides of the soil.

So obviously, there are many of us here that are gathering from all over the country, and so we all have different soil types.

And each 1 of these soils has to be treated just a little bit differently.

It's all based on the type of soil is going to dictate how much, how many nutrients it'll be able to hold and use.

And We'll be going into that a little bit later on in the presentation.

So soil is made up of 30% air, 30% water, 45% minerals, and 5% organic matter.

Now I want you to keep those definitions, if you want to call it that, in mind as we go throughout the presentation because cover crops play a crucial role in making sure that the appropriate amount of air, water, and minerals get into our soil and then are distributed back to our plants.

Now, the NRCS has listed 4 principles for soil health.

Now the NRCS is a branch of the United States Department of Agriculture and the 4 principles are starting off with the first 1 would be disturbance.

We want to keep them as intact and left alone as possible.

So basically if you are going to plant your cover crop instead of plowing it, disking it, or tilling it, a better means of incorporating your cover crop seed into the ground would be either to do a no-till drill or to broadcast the cover crop on top of the ground, preferably on top of a residue from either a former cover crop stand that was covering your fields or the dead residue of a previous cash crop.

The second principle of soil health is cover.

We want to make sure that the soil is covered.

It's not enough to just leave it alone and not disturb it via tillage, but We want to make sure that the soil is covered.

It's not enough to just leave it alone and not disturb it via tillage, but we want to make sure that it's covered with either dead residues, cover crops, cash crops, and there's a number of different reasons why you want to have your soil covered.

But some of the, or 1 of the reasons, at least that I'm gonna mention today, is that if we have the soil covered, it will, to a certain degree, help to keep the soil cooler or warmer, depending on the time of year.

So if it's July and you're out there and if it's 95, 80 degrees outside, I'm from the South so we get those types of temperatures plus humidity during the summertime, it's fairly hot outside for us as humans, and it's especially hot for the soil and the soil biology.

If you're out there in December, January, or February, and it's 30 some degrees outside, It's cold for us, it's also cold for the soil and the soil biology.

So having some type of cover, whether it's a living cover of a cover crop or a cash crop, or just having the residues or a mat of the cover crop laid down on top of your soils, it'll help keep the soil biology just a little bit happier.

Principle number 3 would be keeping living roots in the soil for as long as possible.

Now the living roots, let me rephrase that, the roots of crops are taking in the photosynthesis that the leaves of the plants are getting from the from the Sun and they're taking that and they're sending it down into their roots and They are exuding the changed nutrients for the soil biological system to therefore eat and then render those nutrients in a form that our cover crops or our cash crops will then be able to take up and use.

Series

Special Interests

Grafting Tomatoes

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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