Cloning a Cherry Tomato Plant

About a month ago, I pulled out a Sun Sugar Cherry Tomato plant because it was diseased and I did not want the disease to spread to the other plants in my garden (see this blog entry).

Since it was only May, I wanted to replace the Sun Sugar Cherry Tomato plant with another Cherry Tomato plant.

Instead of starting from seed, I decided to "clone" one of my other Cherry Tomato plants instead.

To clone a Cherry Tomato plant (or any other Tomato plant), all you have to do is to take a cutting from the plant. Make sure the cutting is at last 8 inches long and contains a growing tip.

Cut away the lower leaves and stick the cutting into a pot of moist soil mix. Make sure that only the upper 1/3 of the cutting is exposed.

The picture to the right shows the cutting immediately after I put it in the soil mix.

The cutting is from a Sun Gold Cherry Tomato plant. You can see the leaves start to droop. This is okay, the cutting will rebound in a few days.

The picture on the right shows the cutting eleven days later. You can see the cutting has grown noticeably.

This picture shows the Sun Gold Cherry Tomato plant eighteen days after cloning.

This picture shows the Sun Gold Cherry Tomato planted after I had transplanted in the ground today. This is twenty-four days after I first took the cutting.