Grafted vegetables are great to grow your food at home, yielding super crops. Growing your own is becoming more and more popular - the produce tastes great, there are environmental benefits and it’s great fun!
More and more people are doing it, which is great for all of us, but if you get behind schedule with your sowing and planting, then go grafted! Young grafted vegetable plants available via mail order hold the key to faster, bigger yields. Here, we look at how these super-charged horticultural wonders can help to feed the nation.
What are grafted veg plants?
Grafting is an established, natural technique that has long been used by professional horticulturists. Growers take a piece of growth of a proven variety (the scion) and join it to a more vigorous rootstock. The process creates high-performance, faster-growing plants that deliver heavier crops, with up to 75% more fruit than standard veg plants.
In addition, grafted veg offers better resistance to soil-borne pests and diseases, and can often be grown outdoors, eliminating the need for a greenhouse. Edibles commonly sold as grafted plants include tomato, cucumber, squash, aubergine, pepper and melon.
Supplier Suttons sells its grafted veg as ‘Turbo’ plants, and the motoring analogy isn’t just clever marketing: if you drive a turbocharged car, you’ll know that it’s nippy and quick off the mark. The same principle applies to grafted veg, which grow with incredible vigour that can outpace non-grafted varieties.
Grafted plants can be more expensive than standard young veg, and the choice of varieties is limited, but gardeners benefit from crops that are ready earlier in the season, and carry on later into autumn.
GN’s pick of the best grafted varieties
Aubergine ‘Scorpio’ F1
‘Scorpio’ is so vigorous that crops can be ready for harvest as early as July. It’s an easy-to-grow variety that thrives in containers, yielding big, glossy black aubergines until October (Suttons).
Tomato ‘Coeur de Boeuf’
A distinctively shaped beefsteak tomato with fleshy fruits that ripen from the inside out – perfect for slicing in Mediterranean-style salads. Thrives in greenhouses but will grow in a warm, sunny spot outdoors (DT Brown).
Cucumber ‘Mini Star’
Renowned for its abundance of delicious miniature fruits, which are best harvested at no longer than 11cm, plants offer good resistance to powdery mildew and crop between July and October (Suttons).
Tomato ‘Supersweet’ F1
Small, red cherry tomatoes are all about intense bursts of bite-size flavour, and ‘Supersweet’ won’t disappoint. This winner of a tastiest tomato competition crops prolifically as early as July. (Mr Fothergill’s & DT Brown).
Pepper ‘Bontempi’
Sweet peppers perform best under glass but grafted F1 hybrid ‘Bontempi’ has the vigour to crop heavily outdoors, shrugging off pepper mosaic virus and rewarding gardeners with high yields of mild, juicy, sweet red fruits. (Thompson & Morgan).
Cucumber ‘Bella’ F1
Ideal for unheated greenhouses, this F1 hybrid has a lot to offer: traditional flavour with no bitter aftertaste, vigorous growth with heavy crops of cucumbers up to 35cm (14in) long, and good tolerance to mildew (Mr Fothergill’s & DT Brown).
Pepper ‘Orange Kiss’
Gorgeously ornamental, Italian-style Marconi-type pointed pepper that’s noted for its sweet, crisp fruits. Plants can crop by July, with vivid orange peppers jazzing up summer salads or stir fries while being perfect for stuffing, too (Suttons).
Melon ‘Diva’ F1
A diva by name but not by nature, as it has been bred for the UK climate and crops without fuss, even in cooler summers. The vivid orange flesh of this Charentais melon is noted for its sweetness while plants are high yielding. Grow under cover. (DT Brown).
Top tip
Always make sure the graft is above soil level when potting-on young veg plants. Where plants still have a grafting clip holding the stem to the rootstock, do not remove it. Clips will detach naturally as plants grow.