From Dirt to Water: Cloning a Tomato Plant

Next after basil and watercress, the plants I most enjoy growing in water are tomatoes.  They are easy to start from seed, but sometimes it is faster, and just as economical, to clone them from cuttings.   In another article, I described making hydroponic planters out of one-quart plastic milk bottles.   Pictured here is one of them, housing a newly rooted tomato plant.

The milk bottle makes a good plant container because the inverted top fits snugly into the base.  That reduces the amount of evaporation so that it doesn’t have to be topped off with water too often and the cost of the liquid nutrients doesn’t evaporate into thin air.  Any soluble fertilizer will do, but I prefer to use General Hydroponics Flora series for my clones, starting out with a weaker solution and then as the plant strengthens and shows rapid growth going to about 2 ml each of the Gro, Micro, and Bloom until flowers appear.  I store small amounts of the GH in small capped syringe of the sort that are used for medicating infants.  These hold 10 ml each and I keep them in a hinged recipe box for neat storage.  When buds begin to show, then I start using Green Light tomato bloom spray about once a week, while reducing the Gro by half and doubling the Bloom. 

The plant pictured is a determinate (bush) tomato, but indeterminate (vining) varieties can be cloned to grow in small indoors planters, too.  For those, it is advisable to put a stake in the container at the time of planting in order to avoid disturbing the roots later on.  Last season, by wrapping it around and around the same support. I cloned a currant tomato vine that grew 25 feet long before the tiny but sweet and delicious fruit petered out.    I had vigorously pruned back the suckers while shaping the plant, but instead of throwing them away, rooted them in water to make more plants, so the harvests continued.  

Tomato cuttings take about 4 days to root and do not require a hormone.  Unlike some plants, which must be carefully pruned, roots will form anywhere on the stem.   For all my plants  I use filtered water, as plants do not like the chlorine in tap water, but in a pinch it is sometimes possible to just set ordinary tap water aside for a day or two before using it on the plants.  This depends on your water supply and what kind of chemicals have been added to it.  Some evaporate out better than others.   Since we have a Doulton gravity filter on hand for emergency use, that is where I get my plant water.  The ceramic filter lasts for years and only needs to be scrubbed with fresh water and a brush once in a while as maintenance.