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Monday, April 26, 2010

How to Propagate Tomatoes with Cuttings

As you may know, my tomato plants were germinated from seeds I got in the local plant nursery.  So although I've read a lot about tomato cuttings, it wasn't relevant to me yet.  But now my upside down tomatoes have grown up somewhat.  They're almost a foot long so I figured it was time to play.  I've read that you can propagate tomatoes in water so that's what I'll do.  Besides, I am leaning towards hydroponics since it's uses a lot less water than growing a plant in a soil medium.

I cut off a stem with about 3 nodes and I placed it in a bottle of water.  I used a 2-liter soda bottle, chopped it off about 1/3 from the top and inserted the inverted part into the lower portion.  Then I used some shredded paper to hold the cutting.  After all hydroponics uses inert media to hold the stem in place.  There are no nutrients coming from those little rocks.   So why not paper?  If you look at the picture, you'll also see that only a small part of the stem is submerged in water. Finally, I placed the bottle under the sun since I've read that tomatoes grow like crazy under the heat.

Will it work?  Will the main plant die because I pruned too early?  We'll all find out in 1-2 weeks!



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