The great thing about taking cuttings from tomato plants is that you can easily increase the amount of plants you have, and of course, the amount of tomatoes you’ll get!
It’s also very easy to do. Just remove a side shoot and stick it in a growing medium.
- Soil
- Rockwool
- Jiffy Pellets
- Root It Sponges
Cuttings from Bush Varieties
One of the benefits of growing bush and trailing varieties is that they grow lots of side shoots early in their growth. This means that we can take cuttings in the form of side shoots, plant them in a root it sponge or similar, using the rooting gel, and we’ll soon have another plant!
A cutting will develop, flower and fruit much quicker than when starting from a seed. In fact, a cutting will usually have small flower buds growing already.
Cuttings from Tall Varieties
Side shoots grow from tall varieties too in the form of suckers.
These can be removed and placed in water for their roots to grow. However, using the root it sponges and rooting gel provides much quicker root growth.
A cutting/side shoot only needs to be about 2 inches to be able to root in a sponge etc. This means that you will never be short of the opportunity to take cutting from your plants!
If you are interested in either of these items, in the next week’s newsletter I should have a special price for tomato club members!
anne
I’m interested in cuttings from Bush Varieties – are you including Totem – in these?
I have a Sungold plantt – I haven’t grown these before – it’s growing tall fast and already has a
flower spray on it – I need to repot it – what final size pot? I guess it’s cordon type and needs
staking/side shoot removal? Your advice please.
Haven’t come across root-it sponges!
Anne
Nick
Hi Anne,
Totem will make good cuttings too.
Sungold is a tall variety and should go into its final position/pot/growbag when it starts to flower. A 9inch pot is the smallest size I would use – the bigger the better! It will need staking and the side shoots removed as they grow – you can use the side shoots as cuttings.
Here’s a link to more info about the sponges.
http://www.propagateplants.com/
Best wishes,
Nick