Take your cutting, stick it in the dirt. Keep it damp, not soggy.

Tomatoes have to be the easiest to root.

If you have large plants, you can also bend a branch down and bury the mid section in the dirt. That will root, and you cut the branch off and move it after it roots.

Best way for me is to cut 5-6" cuttings and root them in a small, deep container of moist potting mix and keep in the shade of a tree or such. Takes about 7-10 days. Then I transplant them to the garden. I have a much higher success rate that way than I do with direct planting.

Dave

When I transplantd the Solar Fire & Heatwave in bigger pots
I cut off some of the bottom branches & set them deeper in the soil. I then took those cut branches & put them in 4" pots. It's been 3days since I rooted these cuttings & they seem to be doing OK. I read that you can't save from hybrids
so I'm trying to grow some more plants without having to buy seeds or plants.
John

Keep in mind that cuttings need to be growing tips or suckers, not leaf branches.

Dave

Mine never worked by sticking them in potting mix. I root mine in water in the shade them replant - then they grow

Mine never worked by sticking them in potting mix

Then you either kept them too wet, too dry or the potting mix was contaminated.

Agree with TAZ. Or maybe you just didn't give them enough time to recover. Honestly, rooting them in water is a waste of time. A root is not a root. ;)

Water roots are a very different type root in size and structure. The plant then has to re-adapt to growing in soil and develop the fine feeder roots it needs to survive. When rooted in potting mix they quickly develop the type of feeder roots needed.

Dave

I agree: tomatoes MUST be the single easiest plant to root from cuttings.

I cut a stem off a cherry tomato. The stem was about four feet long! It had three separate clusters of tomatoes on it. I planted the thing in a whiskey barrel as soon as I cut it and it took about three days to look like it is back at optimum health (I did all this at midday and didn't bother to put it in the shade, either). Believe it or not, all the fruit stayed on the plant and I am happy to report that they are all safe and sound, and new flowers have appeared as well.

All of your comments are very encouraging for a type of propagation that up till now I didn't know was possible with tomatoes.
John

Tomatoes are not the easiest plant to root but easy enough. It's impossible for a tomato plant of 4' to grow roots with the capacity to support the plant in 3 days (7-10 as stated above). Transplanting in the heat of the day in full sun will most likely produce a dehydrated and dead plant at best and is not recommended. For best results make the cut at +/-45 degrees.JMO

I also wouldn't try to root a 4' plant. Not saying it can't be done just not as likely to be a good producer. Especially a determinate.

Hey, I didn't say it was going to be a good producer. I just thought, what the heck! Since I am removing stuff from an overly bushy plant and since I have room to plant the cutting, why not experiment?

I am not expecting the cutting to perform as good as the mother plant is performing, but I am keeping it as an experiment. I could always learn, and this is definitely more fun than spraying aphids and weeding!

When I root tomato cuttings I put them in potting soil and put the pot in a basin, with about two inches of water in the bottom. I leave it in our arbor, which gets dappled sunlight, and keep the level of water up, and in a few days the cutting begins to grow. Once it looks strong and healthy I plant the whole ball in the ground, later on in the day, and keep it watered until it seems to be doing well. I've never had that method fail me.

I accidentally snapped off a Mortgage Lifter as I was moving it from a pot into a raised bed. It was a large staked plant, coming out of a 2 gallon pot.

I thought "what the heck, nothing to lose" and planted both the root ball and buried the base of the snapped off plant.

The plant with no roots looked a bit droopy for a couple of days and then took off and started growing. It's now impossible to pick out which plant was planted without any root ball at all.

Soil in the raised bed is a 50/50 mix of sand and well aged compost that drains really well and holds moisture fairly well, so that moisture level for the roots is pretty constantly damp but never soggy.

I had the exact same experience as oregonewoodsmoke. My branch snapped off that had 3 baby tomatoes on them. I plated them in some soil. For a couple of days they were droopy but within the last two days it has perked up. Even the baby tomatoes seem to be growing!

Does this mean that in the Fall, I could take cuttings before frost, and baby them through the winter indoors under lights, and plant them out next spring?

6-7 months is a long time to baby a tomato plant under lights. You could probably do it if you could keep growing temps in the 50s and provide enough light.

I suspect that if you babied tomato cuttings for 5-6 months, they would be gigantic plants by spring.

You could continue taking and rooting cuttings through the winter.

I had a few soil blocks with 2 seedlings growing in them. So I pinched off the smaller ones, and rooted them in their own blocks. And they did really well. I also had a few plants in my garden that got chewed off at the base of the stem. I just poked a hole in the ground, and stuck 'em back in. And they all kept growing.

Last year I had a tomato that there were no seeds available commercially for (and I only got 4 seeds in the first place), and I was down to one last plant and an early frost was predicted, not even close to ripe tomatoes on it, so I took a cutting, put it in growing medium and rooted it under my seed starting lights. When it got to be about 12 inches tall, I topped it and rooted the part I cut off. I set aside the pot with the bottom and meant to add it to the compost heap. A few days later, it was putting out suckers, so it went back under the lights... I kept cutting and rooting, and eventually I wound up with 6 plants. We shall see what we get as they are in the garden now and have baby maters on them. (Hot summer, lots of blossom drop!)

So yes, you can baby them over the winter if you have the space and light for them.

Betsy

Thanks I think I'll try it just to see if I can do it. I manage to keep quite a few things that are "annuals" in this part of the world alive through the winter. I have 5 year old Lantanas in 10 gallon pots that are almost the size of the hedges that grow in the south.

Nice tips here! I am going to try this. I have six Verilux tubes and I have an IKEA metal wire shelf with infinite shelf settings. That should do, right?

Why won't any leaf branch work for a cutting to root?

Curious,
Boo

* Posted by digdirt 6 -7 AR (My Page) on
Sun, Aug 1, 10 at 12:16
Keep in mind that cuttings need to be growing tips or suckers, not leaf branches.

Dave

A leaf branch is only one leaf with no growing tip. That's why it want work. You need to use the part of the plant that keeps on growing taller. " Growing tip or Sucker part of the plant" But don't take the main growing tip only use the side growth growing tips and suckers.

Right. Leaf branches are terminal growth. They have an "end".

Dave

Is it true that hybrid suckers wont produce or that you dont know what you will get? I thought I had volunteer hybrids produce before...just askin?

Is it true that hybrid suckers wont produce or that you dont know what you will get?

Not true at all. The seeds from hybrids may not produce or you don't know what you will get but cuttings from the parent plant are exactly the same, "clones" if you will.

Hybrid cuttings are just as viable as cuttings from open pollinated plants and many of us do both on a regular basis.

Dave