Hi Lola, you certainly can do it! Hopefully they will not damp off. The biggest problem I've had in doing what you are doing is having intense enough light. Like seedlings, the cuttings will become leggy and pale in insufficient light conditions ... so if it is just to root them and get them going ... no problem; but if you want to actually grow them indoors a while you will need intense enough light. I have a tray of 15 of them as we speak, they are the most beautiful chartreuse color and thin, soft texture that I want to eat the leaves.

PC

Hi PC, Thank you for your inspiring reply. My main worry is insufficient light conditions during the winter months. I see, you are in zone 9a and you have problems with insufficient light which makes me think my zone 5 tomato cuttings probably won't have much of a chance at having enough intense light even when sitting in big sunny south windows. (My big south windows are a new addition so I haven't tried this before.)
I see I do need to plan on hanging some grow lights above my tomato cuttings that will be sitting on my window sill.

Is there a difference in grow lights?
What distance do grow lights need to be to different plants?
Hum....I need to do some in-depth studying about grow lights.

My tomato cuttings only need to survive the winter months so they can grow again next spring.
In the spring when rooting tomato cuttings, I place long cuttings in tall skinny plastic soda pop bottles, add drainage holes in the bottoms and cut off the curved bottle tops. Plant long cuttings into my tall skinny planters where they grow many roots along their stems.
Plastic drinking cups would work too but I like the narrow straight sided containers better than flared at the top cups & flower pots -which are not tall enough anyway.
I'm headed out to take tomato cuttings to see if the magic works.
Lola

If you start growing from cutting now, it will roughly SEVEN months before you can plant them out (From now till late May 2015?). Tomatoes (from cutting) can reach full size in about than 3 - 4 months, and will have ripe fruits by then.

So trying just to save a cutting for replant next season is far fetched, IMO. I would rather start from seed much early (say in January) and when it grow good size branches get cuttings from those for spring planting.

A couple of years ago, I took some very late, very tiny tip cuttings in October from a plant that had mostly gone down to disease and light frost, but still had some very healthy looking tiny suckers or tips. I was just curious to see if I could overwinter them or if they would slowly fade away. I stuck them in water, and eventually planted them in small 3" pots after they started to form roots. They stayed in a south window with no added lights and grew very little during most of the winter -- like they were in stasis. Then sometime in February they started having a growth spurt (longer daylight hours?) and I had to repot them.

They blossomed and set a few fruit in the house even though Lauerer is a mid-season producer. When I set them out into the garden, they took off and I had earlier fruit on a normally producing plant that quickly grew back to full size. So if you think you will have trouble getting seeds or replacement plants, it certainly is worth a try. Just expect that your plant will look stringy because of less light. As it grows, you can continue to take cuttings to re-root if you don't have space for larger pots.

Just adding - found a picture that says they were ripe indoors on on April 18th - the pots at that time were still only about a gallon or less.

I sure did not plan on any indoor fruit production, so it was kind of a fun surprise.

LOL-LOL Lo-la ;-) ... Don't read too much into my zone. If I had a good clear 180 degree horizon facing south I could grow all I wanted inside since I have a minimum of 10 1/4 hours of light (on the Winter Solstice).

The reason for growing inside is because plants need to be protected from the pests and diseases outside, both above and below the ground, which thrive in my Zone 9 and the seedlings/rootings wouldn't stand a chance.

Let me suggest a possible plan to do what you want:

Root a few cuttings as you normally successfully would. Put it in a bright light environment *as soon as* it has some roots (a full days' rest is good if transferring from water to soil), and then allow it to grow as normal. When it reaches an unmanageable size for indoors, take the main growing meristem (a.k.a. “main stem growing tip”) and any "axillary side shoots" (a.k. *ugh* a. "suckers") if your cutting grew to support making any larger ones. Do not prune it until then. At that point repeat the whole thing. That way, you are on your second generation, it is no big deal and actually fun to watch and you will have vigorous plants with sufficient light. A 17-20W CF bulb in a 12” round (diameter) reflector is perfect for me to do this experiment successfully.

If you have seeds, just starting them indoors a month earlier would seem to be less fuss, and more manageable. There are benefits either way. Seeds provide mostly disease free plants. Well made cutting plants can be ready to flower and if they have been given sufficient light, be very well developed and hit the season running, and feed the urge like green Mistletoe in winter snow.

The quality of light depends on how much you spend. I can’t justify the expense for high power substantial setups nor their continued power consumption. For growing, I use “daylight” fluorescent bulbs and don't bother with longer wavelength bulbs / lower Kelvin rated temperature bulbs at all.

Any commercial 5000 K to 6500 K bulb is fine by me and the best deal is a dual bulb shop light from Walmart with 4 foot long bulbs if you have a lot or bright compact fluorescent bulbs in reflectors if just a few for fun. The markup when buying anything else fluorescent is usually horrendous, except for packs of CF bulbs. Depending on your set up, you could have more success with germinating seedlings with a combination daylight and low temp bulb, but I would not do that for cuttings, no, no. For seedlings, yes. For cuttings you want the bulb one inch above the leaves. Careful, tomato plants are really stupid. If the leaf is long enough, it will raise itself right up to the bulb and press its nose and lips against it and dry out and dies after less than an hour of that. Unlike human children, tomatoes don't learn not to touch the hot stove after the first time.

Hope this helps. If it is any encouragement, I have actually done it, and I am very happy I did, though damping off frustrated me a little. But I will be using seeds for next season, since I already took the ride and need a break … and have other tomatoes growing if all goes nicely, till past Christmas, since my first freeze is Christmas Eve on average.

Hope that helps and let us know how it goes. Good Luck!
PC

This is really an interesting subject fort me since I have these cutting too. I didn't see ddsack's post when I wrote mine, so I just wanted to say that's the sort of thing I was talking about with chartreuse color, thin leaves, and leggy plants. I admire his plants for fun inside and think it really depends on what you want to do, but I wouldn't use (3? of 4?) of his plants in my garden any more than the 15 leggy ones here, and probably all would go take well up there like he says. Plus, I don't have a nice sliding sunlight bay window or door higher than ground level, facing sun any part of the year where I could even dream of putting big pots in cold weather, let alone 18 plants which is what I need for planting.

If you are dealing with a short season, a thick stemmed plant will always out produce a leggy plant IMO. The key is just to time it right, which is sort of seysonn's point. By putting a bulb with a reflector above a plant, it stays stout and develops heavy, robust "fronds". But again it depends on priorities. I would pinch off inside flowers, too, if the goal was an early plant for the garden, so they plant used all of it's energy to get stout huge solar collectors and my hope would be this would return big time tomatoes. It is not a fair comparison to start seeds or even cuttings late and compare that with a leggy transplant much its senior.

Though conditions vary. If I try to harden off a chartreuse leggy transplant, it will not take off here, but rather be attacked by leaf miners and other bad stuff on its tender thin leaves and never amount to much after that. I would have to pinch off the main growing stem which ddsack could also do; Then the plant would have no choice but to stop getting long looking for limited light and to grow thicker and lusher and maybe be a good transplant so everyone who experiments a little can work out what best suits their climate, soil, and pests for their goals. The hard part is identifying goals, because once I see a flower bud it is very hard to remove it, so goals change along the way ;-)

There are indoor varieties bred for that, so if I planned now, I would want it all and plant appropriate indoor varieties for that and start my seeds earlier using light (since I don't have a good window;-)

Is your variety something special that you don't have seeds for or maybe not know what variety it is? That was my reason for taking most of these cuttings - I got a private heirloom plant in spring and wanted to get it in time for the fall season. I planted seeds when they became available. Initially the cuttings massacred the seeds for speed, but the limitations on light and size inside ... and fall came and I used only the ones I raised from seed. The best clone barely was as good as the average seed due to my specific growing conditions (lack of light), and there is always the possibility that the cuttings will more quickly fall to disease than plants grown from seeds, on the back end of the season, so bigger isn't always better and I think ddsack addressed that in his post too and agree with him.

PC

On the surface of it, six months of biding time before spring is a really long time, but you'll never know unless you try. Maybe if they get too leggy you could take cuttings from the cuttings! Sounds like a 'speriment to me. Dopers do this all the time...