tomato cuttings

For the first time I am trying to take tomato cuttings to save the plants for next year.

As some of you might remember, I took some cuttings from my tomatoes maybe about a month ago. I often take cuttings early in the season to get more plants, and it’s super easy and quick to get the tomato to develop a root system. Just put them in a glass of water and wait about 10 days. I also did the same with a cutting from my amazing aubergine plant.

But I never tried to save tomatoes over the winter, so it will be really interesting to see how it develops and if it will give me bigger and stronger plants in the spring instead of starting from scratch. Another benefit with cuttings is that you get exactly the same DNA in the new plant, as many tomatoes are hybrids that doesn’t give seeds that will create the same plant.

However, I didn’t give them a good start, just placed all of them in a large vase with water in a window and forgot about them. This is very much like me, always have several small experiments happening here and there, and some of them fails just because I don’t follow through. But anyway, several of the cuttings had turned bad and I had to throw them. C'est la vie.

The ones that were still fresh and that had developed a nice root system I planted in pots, and placed in a window in our staircase.

This window is heading south, but as the Swedish winter sun is very shy I have also added a grow light that will help the small plants.

There are many different kinds of grow lights, and not always easy to know what to go for. The ones that are most suitable during winter are simulating daylight and these kinds of lamps have a strong, cold light and are not very cosy to look at. But as it’s out in the staircase it doesn’t bother us. This bulb is 1000 lumen (light intensity) and 6400 K (light temperature) and I keep the light on from 7 am to 10 pm.

The days are getting shorter and shorter and the tomatoes really need that extra light.