Good morning,

In the March issue of Kitchen Garden, Terry Marshall's article on tomato grafting states that "Rootstocks may take 8 to 12 days longer to germinate than the fruiting cultivar".

I bought He-Man seed from Moles and sowed some on 2nd of this month. At the same time I sowed some Moneymaker seed to practice grafting on. On the 3rd April one He-Man was showing through and today, the 5th April, another one had germinated. Could Terry have got it the wrong way round?
Regards, Gerry.

The answer it seems is "Yes".
As nobody answered my post I e-mailed Moles seeds and received a very rapid, and informative, reply from Robert Aldsworth. I'm including it here as it may be of interest to some people.
He says that 8 to 12 days is too long a time gap. They normally recommend 4 days and goes on to say "The He-Man we supply is professional grade seed of a leading hybrid variety, which means that it is graded to ensure germination is at least 90%, while the effect of hybrid vigour is such that it will germinate much more efficiently. In addition to this our He-Man seed is primed (i.e. partially germinated) to ensure rapid and even development. To summarise, I think that you should sow at most four days apart, but many people sow them together in the same pot".
Robert thought that I intended to graft the He-Man with the Moneymaker (I intended to practice by grafting two Moneymaker together, then discard them) and pointed out "To get the real benefit of grafting you really want to use a high performance scion variety with the hybrid rootstock".
Regards, Gerry.

Well done Gerry on digging out an answer. I couldn't have answered your post because I haven't a clue what it was all about