Alice Doyle of Loghouse Plants in Cottage Grove, Oregon has long been shipping annuals, herbs, and vegetables to nurseries up and down the West coast; you've probably bought many Loghouse grown plants at your favorite local nursery.
The last few years Loghouse has introduced grafted vegetables around the country, with the most excitement focusing on tomatoes that grow larger, faster, and more prolific with less coddling. Those are grafted 'Big Beefs' on the right, non-grafted on the left, above. An article running tomorrow in USA Today calls Alice "a grafting pioneer in the U.S."....well, here's the whole quote:
"It's really an economic and an environmental story," says Alice Doyle, a grafting pioneer in the U.S. and co-owner of the wholesaler Log House Plants in Cottage Grove, Ore. "There is a triple bottom-line profit — more yield, less expensive chemical usage, no environmentally negative outputs."
The story cites the successful grafting of new, nutrient-rich purple tomatoes developed in Oregon. "Jim Myers, an Oregon State University horticulture professor who specializes in developing plants that can thrive in the Pacific Northwest, created a purple tomato high in anti-oxidants called the Indigo. Last year, he and graduate assistants tested grafted vs. non-grafted Indigos, and the grafted plants produced three times more."
Read the USA Today story here....it'll run in the paper tomorrow, but is already up on the website....
Great Post. Very interesting and demonstrates how a picture is better than a thousand words. I shall be grafting my tomatoes this year.
Kind regards
Bly http://www.tomatoesandme.com
Posted by: Bly Grant | February 22, 2013 at 08:59 AM