I'm telling ya, folks. It's a sickness, an obsession, something I gotta do or I may explode or something!
I just can't toss a piece of a plant which I know I can root...I can't even toss a piece I have no chance of rooting, but that's neither here nor there. Rooting tomato plants, that's what we're here about.
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| Root baby root! |
If you know nothing about tomato plants, you should know that every bit of this plant can be rooted with very little effort. My father used to allow his tomato plants to crawl on the ground and wherever the stems touched the soil, it would eventually root. I didn't know it then and it's not like my father told me this, but doing this allowed the plant to be healthier and stronger. More roots meant it could gather more nutrients from the soil, plus get more water when it needed it.
I'm guessing some of you die-hard tomato growers are shrieking, "Stakes! You gotta stake your tomatoes!" But I never have and I doubt I ever will...outside in the garden anyway. Inside here in pots, I have to. I just don't have the room for them to flop all over the place.
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| Way more plants than I need in winter |
So, I pruned my tomato plants of those extra branches--suckers they call them because they never produce fruit and just suck the energy from the plant. These suckers grow in between the fruiting branches and I pluck them off and set them in one of the many rooting bottles which I have on my kitchen windowsill and let them root in water.
How many new plants do I have? Far more than I need so far before spring planting time. OY! But I had an extra pot full of soil and so....I planted them, several of them in one pot. I had to! The roots were too many and barely fit in the tiny rooting bottles anymore.
I did tell you it's a sickness, right? Maybe now you'll agree with me.
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1 comments:
Wow, Glory, I knew you were a genius. If you bring in one plant in the fall, and keep it more or less growing, then take the suckers off of it, and root them there you go--a whole new bunch of tomato plants for spring. I did NOT know you could even root tomatoes like that! Of course it makes sense because if you have a tall, spindly tomato plant you can bury it right up to the tip--and it will develop huge roots above the originals. Live & learn huh? Thanks for that great info! ":))
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