With every pruning and pruning, you have tomato cuttings in your hands - much too good to dispose of them in the compost. Use the strongest specimens to propagate your favorite strains. That's how it's done.
Geiztriebe - the underestimated tomato offshoots
If you want to harvest big, plump tomatoes, you can't avoid regular exhaustion. What is meant is the removal of shoots that sprout from the leaf axils. Every tomato plant naturally strives to branch out as lavishly as possible. This takes so much energy that less energy is left for the fruit. A stinginess is therefore undesirable, no matter how strong and healthy it may be.
With a length of 5 to 10 centimeters, a stingy shoot is the ideal tomato offshoot. If you are in the mood for more tomato plants in the short term, use the stateliest specimens for propagation.
This is how new tomato plants grow from offshoots
Tomato cuttings should be processed without a long delay so that they do not dry up. This is how it works in no time:
- Fill pots with vegetable soil or a mix of compost, clay, sand and basalt flour
- Defoliate and plant two-thirds of each tomato scion
- Water extensively, not wetting the shoot
- tie the cuttings to small wooden sticks for support
In summer temperatures, rooting progresses rapidly. It is advisable to initially place the tender plants in a semi-shady location. Once they have rooted through the seed tray, the offspring are repotted or planted outdoors. Then they thrive in sunny locations, bloom and deliver delicious tomatoes this season.
Obtain cuttings from bush tomatoes
By no means all tomato varieties can be exhausted. Bush tomatoes, for example, stop growing on their own in order to concentrate on producing fruit. If you want one or more offshoots here, choose a side shoot above the first branch. In this case, it is usually a fruit shoot; the loss of which a vital tomato plant can easily cope with.
tips and tricks
The rooting of tomato cuttings is even faster if you place the shoots in a glass with willow water. It contains natural growth hormones in abundance. You can easily make willow water from one-year-old pieces of willow, which you pour over with boiling water and leave for 24 hours.