I have experimented with Beaufort and Maxifort seeds for almost three weeks now, comparing their growth rates and patterns with the three heirlooms I’m using. There is no doubt that the rootstocks grow more slowly, lagging behind the heirlooms for about 12 days then “fattening up” pretty fast.

I am at a point on the calendar now where I have to get things rolling or have my grafted transplants going into the field later than “regular” transplants. That would skew the experiment, so I can’t wait any longer.

I will seed the first three trays of rootstock tomorrow, followed by three trays on days 2 and 3.  I will then wait 10 days (instead of the seven I had planned) before starting to seed batches of heirlooms.