Once upon a time on usenet Michael Evangelista wrote:
@misfit your experience with tomatoes from cuttings is interesting.
It seems like this may only be possible in temperate, long season
climates. Every winter I envy my NZ friends, one buddy sends me
photos with surfboards and santa hats every christmas. I know what
you mean about fake tomatoes at the grocery, I shed a little tear
every time I pay money for a mater.

Hi Michael. I think that it's likely worth trying growing toms from cuttings
removed from your earliest plants even with a shorter growing season.
Nothing to lose but a bit of time and potting soil. (Or with my current
method Jiffy peat pellets.)

Tomato plants have two distinct growing phases dictated mainly by the age of
plant. The first is the vegatitive phase; The new plant grows leaves and
gets up to about a foot and a half or more over a month to six weeks before
entering the fruiting phase. The beauty of using laterals from a plant
that's already in the fruiting phase for cuttings is that the plants will
start fruiting right from ground level when planted - they don't go through
a vegatitive stage so you save a month or more compared with growing from
seed.

If your growing season is shorter than mine you don't need to wait to select
cuttings from the best plants if you have good seed. Just take the first
lateral from above the first flower cluster as soon as it's at least three
inches long. Using the peat pellets I use cutting three or four inches long,
strip any leaves from the bottom half then trim leaves on the upper half so
that I'm cutting the larger leaves back by half. Then I just leave the
cutting in it's peat pellet sitting in a quarter-inch of water out of direct
sunlight.

You can do the same using a small pot and a bit of seed raising mix. However
I like the peat pellets as you just plant the whole thing in the ground
which maximises growing time by eliminating transplant shock. If I'm not
using peat pellets then I go with a bigger cutting, up to six inches. I've
seen people use even bigger cuttings but they tend to go through a wilting
stage and, unless you're growing them in a 'humidity dome' are no faster
than the smaller ones as the take longer to be ready to plant out.

Often by the time the donor plant's first fruit is filling out the cutting
is in the ground, producing it's first flower bunch and is six to eight
inches tall. That should work for all but the very shortest growing season
and I find it easier than growing more plants from seed. I have a 99.9%
success rate with the cuttings 'taking'. Tomatoes are so vigourous they
don't need much coaxing at all to grow from cuttings.

As I was telling my friend the other day; Supermarket tomatoes varieties are
chosen for several things. Mainly resistance to bruising and 'holding' well
between picking and reaching the shelves. Secondly most important thing is
appearance - shoppers buy with their eyes. Lastly if they can sit on the
shelves for a few days without going soft or rotting then they're deemed to
be a good tomato. Nowhere in that equation is taste or nutritional value.

The last few times I've been silly enough to buy some over the last couple
of years I've thrown them out after trying one. All of which explains why,
when I had a good crop last year and gave kilos of them away to neighbours
(I only grow slicing tomatoes these days) they all came back to me saying
how delicious they were and asking my 'secret'. It seems that a lot of
non-gardening people have forgotten what a tomato should taste like.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)