Cloning Tomato Plants For FREE PLANTS!

[@Marilynkefirlady]

The best way I have found to clone tomato suckers is to use solo cups with no holes. Pot up the cutting and fill the cup all the way up with water. In other words set it and forget it. By the time the water level goes down, it is time to transplant. Two weeks. I do this with basil plants too. Plants are happier if they are surrounded with soil from the get go. There is no transplant shock with this method. There was always transplant shock when taking a cutting only rooted in water and transferring to soil.

[@geekygreenhouse]

Good idea, thanks for sharing!

[@chengdutwo]

Never had any transplant shock when replanted into my Aquaponics system. Straight from water or from seedlings from soil. I always totally remove all the soil from the roots before placing the seedlings into my Aquaponics which uses pumice stone as the growing media.

[@TheDuckofDoom.]

@@chengdutwo And the exact opposite of what the OP was talking about.

[@eb1684]

2 good new ideas! Thanks. Your yard looks very nice.

[@geekygreenhouse]

Thank you :)

[@TwoMarshmallows1]

What a fantastic idea! Thank you so much for the step-by-step explanation, and the advice to cut into a V-shape. I'm definitely going to try this the next time I grow tomatoes. Hope you have a lovely day!

[@matthewhenderson9983]

yeah the vee cut makes a lot of sense for some varietals and smaller cuttings. I have had some pretty small sucker cuttings grow roots and sometimes only at that very end. If i had made the vee cut, they would have been able to thrive much better.

[@darkdraggon]

I just did this a few weeks ago to mine, did the whole process in direct sun. I put the bare stalks directly into potting soil in small pots and placed the pots in saucers filled with water. They did droop for a few days but quuckly recovered and are back with new blooms and growing strong.

[@geekygreenhouse]

Nice, it's amazing how resilient tomatoes are

[@milstringfellow6283]

I did the same thing. Growing fine. I also start some by letting the roots grow in water.

[@pamjacobe4586]

I live in the mountains in Northern Idaho and are growing season is very short. But everybody is putting there tomatoes outside now so I watched your video on cloneing and I found it VERY helpful, our city water is so bad we don't even drink it. I put my clone in the city water and in a short time it was all droopy. So I quickly changed the water to bottled water and put it on my windowsill inside. Tin foil around the jar . So we will see. A green thumb I don't have. Plus we have to watch out for all the deer that eat are gardens up! Anyway you!❤

[@pamjacobe4586]

I meant, " Thank-you " my new cloning plant is doing fine. I'm glad I found your channel on my. It's been VERY helpful. 😁🤟👍👍

[@Freetofreet]

I grow 365day a year in Brisbane Australia 🇦🇺 and have mother plant that is years old, if you want to experiment then you can scuff the surface on a sucker on the mother plant still growing and put some moist soil around the scuff and seal with ptfe. Unwrap after a week and ready to cut off and plant 🪴 in a pot etc should be loads of shoots.

[@nml5536]

Have you guys done a pepper geek cloning episode ? If not would love it as I haven't had much success but I don't want to use hormones.

[@geetasood9149]

Sir I m from India n just starting gardening. U have v .well explained new plant from scur.i want ti know that we have to remove all the scurrs from bottom till the.top.n how many leader stem we should.take till the top.pls revert

[@regatta2k]

Love your channel

[@geekygreenhouse]

Thank you ☺️

[@MarthaFaey]

Well done. Very clear and easy to follow.

[@traptrap.9574]

Does this work with F1 hybrids?

[@matthewhenderson9983]

@geekygreenhouse , thanks for the video. I have a bunch of tomato cuttings in water right now waiting to go into soil. Do you have any suggestions for the best phase of root growth to transplant into soil? I noticed you had a pretty 'bushy', small root ball going. Have you noticed any difference in earlier or later stages of root development? The only thing i've noticed is if i let them go too long (basically another week past what you showed in this video) then they seem to have trouble rooting into soil. Also if the white root lines are turning brown, they seem to be too hard to want to transplant from water. A few other YT channels show transplanting rather early. Basically, when roots start to show up on the stem, they go straight to soil. I have tried different timing (not scientifically) and don't have a good consensus on the best time. One other tip i have found when planting in the ground, is to pack the root ball in coconut coir or other soft treatment to let the roots get going. i have a fair amount of clay in my soil. This is really only a clay soil issue but i usually pot my clones in 4-6" pots to strengthen up the root ball. Then i transplant in the ground with a very deep hole and a fair bit of coir around the base of the plant so roots can develop. In the past, i've noticed that plants going into the ground seemed to have a hard time developing bigger roots and therefore not having much fruit yield. From what i could tell, my high clay soil hindered root development.

[@broadheadburke1948]

You two are my idols! I've learned so much from you about gardening and can't thank you enough. QUESTION: about how long after placing the rooted sucker in soil does one wait to start the fertilizer regiment? Going to try cloning many different things next year.

[@geekygreenhouse]

So the soil we use has nutrients built in, so we only fertilized this once or twice, later in the season! It produced really well. Hope you enjoy your own cloning this season!

[@elizabethr2908]

Does it have to be a sucker or can you clone from any branch? Love your channel!

[@matthewhenderson9983]

there needs to be some stem there. if you cut just a leaf branch, it won't grow. If you look close at a young chute, there are fine little 'hairs' growing on it. That's basically a root trying to form if it touches anything long enough. But roots will only grow from stem material. the head of that sucker is the leading point of growth for a tomato plant, so you want to take that and let it grow into a new plant.

[@BillyJoe71]

Gotta love the super sweet cherry 100s. One plant produces way more than me and my son can eat. I still plant at least 2 of them. Also i clone the suckers just incase.

[@iCazZiStronZi]

Would you guys ever consider doing a fruit channel, or doing fruit videos on this channel? I have been growing tomatoes and vegetables for a while now, and this year for the first time I have started experimenting with strawberries and blueberries. This is probably one of the most informative and helpful channels I have ever found along with pepper geek, I have been subscribed to pepper geeks for a while I actually just found this channel today I don’t know how it took soo long lol but I am glad I did, better late than never haha 😂 I am pretty amateur with fruits and was just curious if you would ever consider sharing some info on them. Hope you have a great day!

[@geekygreenhouse]

We have a few fruits in the garden now so definitely! We’re actually growing strawberries and blueberries, so maybe sooner than later :)

[@iCazZiStronZi]

@@geekygreenhouse Awesome I am happy to hear that 😁

[@davidniemi6553]

In addition to starting in water (which is great for seeing what's happening in real time) I've heard of putting suckers directly in the ground, but have settled on a middle ground of putting suckers into a narrow deep pot with potting soil until they outgrow it. My suckers (mostly from Moskvitch tomato suckers from 2 months ago) are now in-ground, about 5' tall, and flowering. They need extra nutrients before going in-ground or a larger pot. Have you tried the direct-to-potting-soil method, and if so do you find water first to be faster?

[@davidniemi6553]

Follow-up: I grew about a half dozen suckers into 5' or so tall tomato plants in 2022 and 3 or 4 in 2021. I collected the suckers in late May and early June, but did not have enough growing season left for them to produce much. I think I need to start collecting them earlier and/or collect them from faster-producing varieties (but, the paradox here is that suckers are most common on large indeterminate varieties that take longer to grow fruit).

[@matthewhenderson9983]

@@davidniemi6553 i think it depends somewhat on how you're growing your tomatoes. i do mostly indeterminates that grow a lot of vines before flowering too. I'm actually lucky enough to be able to winter over a few plants indoors and have kept the original seed plant alive through three winters. I just started propagating sucker clippings last week to grow them under light until my last frost is over. The issue with rooting straight into soil is root development. My varietal (don't know the name but its a ribbed italian style fruit with long crazy vines that just keep goin!) does better when it has a big root ball. I know this because i dug up my tomato patch last winter and the prolific plants had huge root systems. The plants the faired poorly had small scrubs for a root system. The vine you plant can also grow more roots if you plant it good and deep. If it's runner, like mine, you can even support it in a pot indoors until its nice and tall, harden it off properly, and get in the ground nice and deep. You might just find that it will start to fruit much earlier in the year for you.

[@davidniemi6553]

Thanks for the suggestions. I do like to plant tomatoes deep, starting with deep pots for seedlings in the late winter / early spring. I did get very good root development growing in pots, better than direct planting in the ground; and the plants grown from suckers did get fairly large. There just wasn't enough time in the growing season to grow and ripen tomatoes when planted in late May -- but in the right year I might be able to get that to happen a couple weeks sooner. I have some very early tomato varieties, but they remain small and do not produce suckers. I have overwintered a few peppers which are true perennials, but don't have a very good place to put overwintered plants without risking fungus gnats in the house and with a cool enough temperature for the plants to survive indoors the whole winter yet not freeze. I suppose I could overwinter late-season suckers while getting them started indoors, but again they'd need to be indoors a long time.

[@matthewhenderson9983]

I have done straight to soil a few times. I even took a long running vine and buried it once, letting it set roots in place while still connected to the mother plant. Both of those methods worked. I mostly start in water first so I can be sure that roots have started before I put more effort into growing the plant into an adult stage. I mentioned in another post on here that I'm in a very dry climate, so issues with algae don't give up as often. Also, keeping a directly planted cutting humid enough is more challenging here.

[@davidniemi6553]

Ah, that explains a few things. I'm in a forest in a pretty wet climate so drying out is rarely an issue. I should give planting suckers another try -- and I have the perfect variety to try it from, a very indeterminate variety that is unusually disease resistant and cold tolerant. Previously I mostly did it to "Moskvitch" which has a similar growth habit but less disease resistance and slower fruiting.

[@theburnhams2925]

One word: Calcium! Excellent video, thank you!

[@JETBLACKPRIEST]

Arent cherry tomato suckers more productive than usual tomato sucker branches?

[@geekygreenhouse]

Yes, this plant went on to produce quite a crop for us! And the original mother plant produced buckets of cherry tomatoes

[@matthewhenderson9983]

i think every indeterminate variety will have a certain personality. I clone a variety that is a ribbed beefsteak (sometimes 1 lb.+) size fruit. I've had healthy clones that are more prolific than the mother plant

[@0_-EL]

Do you need to plant tomato every year from fresh ? Or to cut down the stems to ground every year to let it grow back next year?

[@_Subtle_]

The container does not need to be opaque. Change the water daily.

[@TheDuckofDoom.]

Over complicating it, this isn't a hardwood cutting. 1. take the sucker with a flat cut and trim the flower buds and about half of the mature leaves (either half of each leaf or half by number) to reduce evaporation 2. stick it in some wet potting mix 3. put it in bright shade at 70f-95f, protected from wind. 4. keep humidity moderately high and mist with plain water a few times per day. You actually want the leaves to dry off between mists and get just the slightest hint of wilt and then be rehydrated by the next mist. Soaked to runoff.(Which will also prevent minerals from building up) If you have very hard water maybe use half tap and half rain (or distilled or deionized [reverse osmosis] water), I don't recommend 100% distilled as it can draw nutrients out of the plant. 5. They will stop wilting in a few days to a week depending on temperature, which means they have roots. Stop misting and start moving them back into more direct light so they can manufacture food. Like hardening a seedling, but this is less about sunburn and more about water loss. They will be full strength less than a week after first root formation. Tomato roots come straight through the skin you don't need to expose cambium, really the larger cut will just increse chance of rotting so use a basic straight across cut. Tomatoes have zero need for added rooting hormone The water jar method will keep the tops perky but rooting time will be much longer because the upper plant can absorb all the water it needs without roots. Start on a weekend so you can do the misting, If you do need to leave for the day then mist well and cover with a plastic tote and if in a low humidity area also mist the inside of the tote. It's more humid than ideal but they won't die. A dry clear tote can be good as a wind break if you're around to mist the cuttings but just live in a very low humidity area.

[@CarlosGarcia-tv4rk]

How about pruning?

[@CarlosGarcia-tv4rk]

How about pruning

[@dlzmedia2792]

I just put mines directly into soil and it works

[@geekygreenhouse]

Awesome!

[@iwanttobelieve5970]

I just broke off the top of one of my tomatoes and then I remembered to just place it back into the soil.

[@geekygreenhouse]

😂 gotta love how easily tomato cuttings root

[@vincecastillo6554]

Everyone is using Gardner Scott information and not giving him credit.

[@musictech85]

Just save seeds

[@WalterWD]

Starvation to induce growth seems a bit harsh. Can you imagine doing that to another living being which can actually communicate its suffering in a way you comprehend?

[@blltz4410]

Do you have a moral crisis over pruning plants or cutting them back before they go dormant too?