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Earliest Tomatoes Ever - Part 1

My Overwintered Tomato

I had read an article in Mother Earth News awhile back (I don't remember the issue or date and can't find the article) about a guy who took cuttings from his tomato plants in the late summer or early fall, rooted them, and brought them inside for the winter, growing them by a big window. A couple of years ago I tried it but my cuttings had bugs and they didn't make it too long. This year I tried again and it is working pretty well. Unfortunately I didn't think about doing it last fall until I heard there was a frost warning one night. Even a light frost will kill tomatoes so I went outside and took 3 cuttings.

There are two kinds of tomatoes: determinate and indeterminate. Determinate varieties grow and then flower and produce fruit over a relatively short period of time. After they fruit they may continue to grow and fruit some, but not as much. Indeterminate varieties continue growing, flowering, and producing fruit until frost kills them. So the theory is if you get a cutting from an indeterminate variety and bring it inside it will continue to grow, flower, and fruit. I had only one indeterminate variety in my back yard at the time, Principe Borghese, which is a small tomato used for drying. It is best to use cherry or small tomatoes due to the weight of the fruit the plant could produce. Of course, that is if you take cuttings early enough to get fruit!

With the reduced sun of late fall it took forever for the cuttings to do anything. One died (actually that didn't take long!), one is still only about 7 inches tall, and one eventually decided to grow and is now about 4 feet long, has a couple of suckers (see pictures), and is starting to get buds. I knew when I took the cuttings it was late to get any fruit so if that happens this winter it will be a bonus. What I really wanted was the suckers. These are what I will use to getting cuttings in the spring. I also never made any form of trellising for the tomato to grow on so it is in an 18 inch pot and is just wound around itself a couple of times. That may not be bad because tomatoes, like many other vines, will grow roots from wherever their stems touch the ground. If this happens I may be able to take more cuttings from the main stem and still be able to transplant the entire thing into the garden in the spring. Anyway, I will give the suckers a couple more weeks to get a little bigger and then cut them and start the spring rooting process.

Sucker close-up. The sucker looks like a new plant coming off from
the leaf node of the parent vine.

The second theory of this approach is that given 2 plants of the same size, cuttings "think" they are older than plants grown from seed. What does this mean? The cuttings should have a more extensive root system and they will decide they are ready to start making buds and start fruiting sooner than seedlings.

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