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David WE Roberts wrote:
Easier to get one from a nursery and then perhaps clone a couple from the
side shoots if I have the time.

Does that work? I did break off a side shoot of one plant last year and
stick it in the side of the grow bag, and was quite surprised it didn't
die,
but it didn't actually /do/ anything either.

Tomatoes are one of the easiest plants to propogate via cuttings.
If you let a side shoot grow to a sturdy size instead of pinching it out,
then cut it out carefully with a knife and plant it in very moist compost
then you will very quickly get another tomato plant.

If you go away for a few weeks then come back you may even find side shoots
which have set fruit.
These still seem to propogate fine.
The new plants are obviously behind the main plant in terms if size and
maturity but if you take the cuttings early on in the season you can get a
crop from the cloned plants.

It does occur to me that if you start tomatoes off really early under glass
then you can get an additional 'free' set of plants to plant outside later
in the year.

If you are growing from seed this is not so important (unless you have a
germination failure) but if you buy one or two plants from a nursery then
you can grow additional plants on.

Last year I took a load of cuttings quite late (June, I think) and planted a
group of them in a wide pot.
The result was a number of small plants each of which set a couple of
trusses.
As a group the plants produced about as much as a single larger plant.

If you want to grow a lot of tomatoes but don't have enough space (or
prepared beds) at the start of the season then you can use this strategy to
fill out your greenhouse/garden/allotment as space becomes available without
having to go through multiple sowings of seeds.

Cheers

Dave R