Cloning Tomato Plants

One of the best methods to stretch your dollar is to plant a vegetable garden and as anyone who has had a garden will tell you, plants are just not getting any cheaper. If fact, with many of the big box stores reducing their selections on the store shelves, it is getting harder to find some of the less popular varieties of tomatoes. How to you get around this problem?

Easy! Clone your tomato plants.

The advantages of cloning are that one plant can become 20, 30, or more plants in a very short period of time. Tomato plants are one of the easiest plants to clone if you follow a couple of very simple and cost effective steps.

The materials you will need for this project will be; a small greenhouse, plant hormones, plant soil, fertilizer, light source, and a sharp knife. All of which are easy to procure and if you are willing to do a little planning, far less expensive than buying new plants.

First, you will need to have a tomato plant that you want to clone. I find that the best type of plant to clone is that of the indeterminate variety. Indeterminate tomato plants are those plants that will grow all season long or as long as the weather is favorable to growth. The benefit of indeterminate tomato plants is that you can harvest and clone new plants not only at the end of the season, but all season long, as they will simply replace whatever is removed and continue producing. Determinate plants have set growth levels and will not always replace what is removed.

Now you will need to gather your materials for the cloning process.

Greenhouse

A small greenhouse like those sold in the big box stores will work fine, but being cheap, I go to the dollar store and purchase the 2 for $1 serving trays with clear plastic covers.

Plant hormones

Any quality plant hormone will work. You won’t use much, so don’t buy anything but the smallest available.

Planting soil

A good starting soil available at the hardware store will work, but as before, buy no more that 2 cubic feet of soil, unless you really plan on having a lot of plants. Also, if you want to make your transplanting of your clones easier, you can use empty toilet paper rolls, (cut them into thirds), to divide your plants.

Fertilizer

Miracle grow for tomatoes or any equivalent fertilizer will be just fine.

Light source

I generally prefer to use 4’ shop lights with a full spectrum daylight bulb. They are readily available at most hardware stores.

Sharp knife

An exact-o knife or the equivalent, just don’t use scissors as they will compress the end of the plant and that will reduce your chance of success.

The process:

In each tray pour you soil until it reaches about a ¼” from the upper edge of the tray. If you are using planting disks, place them in the tray and water them. It will take about 30 minutes for them to grow to size. As indicated above, if you use the toilet paper holders, place them into the tray first and then add soil until you reach the top of the tube. The soil will compact over time.

After you have prepared your planting medium, take a basket and take cuttings from the plant you wish to clone. When taking cuttings, look for the younger shoots, as they will take to the cloning process much better than older shoots. You are looking for a shoot with about 2-3 leaves, (no more), and 3-4 inches overall. If your shoot is longer than that, just trim off the excess.

Once you have collected your cuttings, use a pencil to poke vertical holes into the soil you have prepared. Each hole should be about 2 inches apart. If you are using disks or toilet paper holders, poke a hole into each.

Dip each cutting into a bowel of water so that each stem is wet and then dip the cutting into the plant hormone. You are looking to coat each stem of the cutting with the hormone. Now you can plant the cutting into the medium.

After you have planted all of your cuttings, water each plant individually. Be careful not to over water. It is better to use less than more, you can always add more water at a later point. Cover the tray with the transparent cover and place under the lighting source. In order to keep the cuttings from becoming stringy, place the light as close to the tray as possible. If you are using fluorescents, you won’t risk melting your trays. You can expect to see condensation on the roof of the tray within 24 hours. If you do not see any condensation, add more water and wait another 24 hours.

Check your plants daily and you can expect to see new growth within 2 weeks. Once two weeks have passed, you can remove the transparent cover. After 4 weeks or when the plants are 6” tall, you can transplant!

Good luck and enjoy!