new Tomato plants from side shoots

lovelyjubbly

This has probably been mentioned here before so apologies if it is a repeat!

I have just read an article by Monty Don in the Gardeners World magazine where he has visited Italy for a new show and when he was visiting a couple in their garden they said they never grow Tomatoes from seed, they simply use the shoots from the growing tomato plants (the ones you usually nip out) and root them for next years plants, thus saving a lot of hard work growing from seed. Is this worth doing in this country? or is it just for warm climates?
it sounds an excellent idea!:T

Chimera

I've heard of planting for this years, but not next years.. every shoot I pinch out, I put in a pot. Only one has really done much (to be honest, probably because I don't really look after them), but it is fruiting and flowering.. love it - can't stand waste

cubegame

It's what we normally do. However for some reason this year our whole bloody garden is covered with tomato plants. Something must have eaten fruits and spread seed everywhere. There's a hardly a square foot or pot which doesn't have one!!!

A._Badger

Tomato shoots root very well in water. What I do is take a few side shoots, stand them in a vase until they've produced a healthy mass of roots, then pot them up in compost.

Unless you had a heated and artificially lit greenhouse, you couldn't really keep one plat going from year to year in the UK as they'd die off in the winter. But it's a good way of bulking up your crop at no cost, either from seed sown or bought-in plants.

Primrose

I've got a couple of tomato plants growing this year from sideshoots but I very much doubt whether you could keep them going in this country without a heated greenhouse because of our low winter temperatures. And even if you had the heat in the greenhouse, winter light levels are so low that plants wouldn't thrive. I'd just a soon grown from seed every year. Tomatoes must be some of the easiest plants to grow from seed. I've always got them popping up in my compost heap from the odd squashy tomato I've obviously put in my compost crock.