TOMATO TRICKERY Pinched-off tomato laterals can become whole new plants Yep, tomato season is a satisfying time, and they must be one of the most rewarding and easy plants to grow – all you need is soil, sunlight and water. You know how you’re supposed to pinch off the ‘laterals’ on tomato plants to make them grow nice and tall? Well, as you pull off these shoots you simply pop them into a container of water for a few weeks until the shoots have grown their own little roots. From there you just plant them in their own sunny spot and hey presto, you’ve got a whole new plant. The nice thing about this trick is your crop is staggered – so just as your oldest plants start giving up the ghost, your younger ‘clones’ should be yielding decent fruit. Laterals, by the way, are those shoots that sprout from the ‘armpits’ of tomato plants – the joins where the branches come off the stems. Any growth you find in that join (that isn’t a cluster of flowers) should be pinched off to promote upward growth – but my advice now is to let them get a bit longer before you pinch, so they turn into decent-sized plants for cloning. By the way, I mentioned in the last newsletter that I’d tried burying terracotta pots filled with water as a way of irrigating lettuces, and I can report that it definitely works. The lettuce seedlings closest to the pots have thrived on the constant moisture that leaches through the terracotta, while those further away have struggled when it’s dry.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 00:59:27 +0000
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