Tomato Propagation

No, this isn't a Mother's Day bouquet.  It's a bunch of tomato sucker cuttings from my plants in the garden.  I have a lot of friends that would like some tomato plants, and I am trimming the suckers anyway, so I thought I would give propogation a try.  A sucker is the growth that comes out between the main stem and a leaf stem on a tomato plant.  Many gardeners say to pluck the suckers to make your main stem (or two) stronger and support the fruit that grows from them versus having smaller fruit by letting all of the grow.  Each sucker represents a full tomato plant of its own, which if you trim and root out will be a genetic twin of the plant you took it from.    

This is a sucker.  It's recommended that you wait until the sucker are about two to three inches tall to snap them off the plant.  If you're going to propogate them, leave them longer, even much longer, so that when you plant them they will have several inches in the dirt to grow roots from.  Tomato plants have the unique advantage of growing roots all along the stem, so the deeper you plant them, the larger the root system will be from the beginning.

After I took my cuttings, I trimmed each of the suckers so that there were only two leaf stems at the top of each plant.  That way they will put the initial effort into making roots, not trying to feed the extra leaf vegitation.  After trimming, I put them in a jar of water that had a few drops of liquid fertalizer in it.  Even being in the water, they almost immediately began to droop and wilt.  I'm told this is normal and that in a few days they will be back to where they were.  The first few days you are to keep them in a warm place, but out of direct sunlight.

They don't look to good do they.  Oh well, we'll see what happens.  The worst that can happen is that they die.  They were getting trimmed anyway, so no loss.  I have heard that tomato plants that are propogated will actually produce fruit before their parent plant.  Interesting, but I'm not going to bet on it.

They don't look very good.  We'll see what they look like in a couple of days.  Wish me luck.  If anyone has done this before and has tips, let me know.