a question answered (Plant Propagation)

I had a question posed to me today from a new(ish) reader. I thought I'd take a minute to give a quick answer.

Jasonbx asked...
Started reading through your blog earlier this spring. (I tried starting tomatoes from seed this year, and was looking for any info I could find.) I'm curious if your thinning cuttings dipped in rooting hormone made it? Also would this potentially work with larger tomato "branches" or only main stems?


Well Jason, Yeah... They did great!
As a matter of fact I'd even go so far as to say that they did even better than I would have hoped. I kept them very wet for the first week and a half, sort of to mimic the way that I had had them in water like I had done in a previous test. That trial ended up rooting them pretty well even though I hadn't used any rooting hormone at all. This time I was putting them into a soil-less medium so I thought a little hormone wouldn't hurt any.
Tomatoes tend to do very well as it is for setting new roots. You can see above that the roots have easily established themselves in the cell pack that I placed them in. Below is a picture of another tray of cuttings that I just did the same thing with last weekend.This tray has the extra cuttings from some bell papers, jalapenos, a few more tomatoes and even some eggplant.

That leads me into the answer to the second part of Jason's question. Can you do the same thing from regular "branches"? Yes, absolutely. In fact, if you've ever had a large tomato plant droop till it touches ground, you may have found that it will readily throw down roots mid-branch and start a new plant. As long as you don't cut too large a piece of new growth (it needs to be able to support itself easily) it will root fairly easily.

I hope to do some more interesting propagation trials as the season progresses. I'm glad to know that they've helped a little, or at the very least piqued some interest!

Happy propagating!
P~