How To Prepare Cuttings Of Hybrid Tomatoes And Save Them In Winter

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Hybrid tomatoes

All gardeners know that hybrid tomato seeds are very expensive, especially from well-known manufacturers. It is no secret that such tomato plants are more productive than varietal ones.

But, I think, any gardener will agree that tomatoes of varietal tomatoes are more tasty, and not hybrid ones. Therefore, both varieties and hybrids are usually grown on the site. For example, I am planting several hybrid tomato plants in my greenhouse. Their fruits are mainly used for canning. I give preference to cocktail tomatoes for the size of their fruits - they are not large, but not small, almost all fruits in the brush ripen at the same time. Their peel is dense, even if you don't pick them off in time, they do not crack, and can hang for a long time. And most importantly, they are easy to preserve.

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Cocktail tomatoes grow in my greenhouse (made of cellular polycarbonate) until frost - I do not limit their growth, like all other tomato plants in the second half of July. I noticed that these tomatoes do well in cool weather, both in spring and autumn. So this year, at the beginning of October, red tomatoes are still hanging in our greenhouse.

The plants of cocktail tomatoes have one drawback - they give many stepchildren, so they need to be monitored constantly, removing stepchildren in time, otherwise a solid forest grows. I leave my stepchildren only on the top of the plants in early September, in order to get cuttings later for winter storage.

I store these hybrid tomato plants at home during the winter. The tomato plant is a liana, it can grow indefinitely, so I harvest cuttings (the top of the plant and stepsons) in the fall before frost, unless of course the plants are affected by late blight, by the way, cocktail tomatoes are resistant to it. The infinitely expensive seeds of hybrids with very low germination rate prompted me to this method of preserving planting material. For example, in 2013 I bought seeds of hybrid cocktail tomatoes for 100 rubles - there were five seeds in the package - and none of them came up. I think that many gardeners, and especially pensioners, cannot afford such a luxury, so the tomato hybrid you like can be preserved in winter. It doesn't take much effort. In addition, in early spring, the preserved cuttings can also be propagated. At first it was an experimenthe justified himself and has now entered my practice.

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Technique for creating vegetative cuttings

How do I do it? In late September or early October, before the frost, I cut my stepchildren and the tops of tomato plants for winter storage. Such a cutting should have 3-4 leaves (they are small) and a stem 10-15 cm long. I try to cut those cuttings with a thicker stem, they winter better. In addition, in the process of their growth during winter storage, the stem becomes thinner. If there are flowers on the stem, I cut them. Tomatoes on them, of course, will appear and even ripen, but they will take away the strength from the cuttings. If you have a place on the windowsill, then you can try to cut more flowering cuttings, and then by the New Year, according to my method (in water), grow several dozen small red tomatoes.

I bring the cuttings home to a city apartment and put them in a glass jar with a wide neck in the brightest place on the windowsill. On each can I write the name of the hybrid. You cannot put many cuttings in a jar, they will be cramped, and they will fall out. Therefore, the cuttings in the jar should be spacious - I put no more than 5-6 pieces. It is better if they do not touch each other. 7-10 cm of the stem should be immersed in the water.

After some time, roots will appear on the submerged stems, the stem will grow upward and become thinner. This is why it is best to cut thick-stemmed cuttings. The distance between leaves on the stem during growth will increase due to lack of lighting. I do not plant these cuttings in the ground, otherwise they will start growing, and on the street there is already a short daylight hours, and many cuttings in pots cannot be placed on the windowsill.

In the first half of November, I cut off the upper part of each rooted cutting (approximately 15 cm) and put it back in boiled cold water, after washing the jar. I discard the lower part of the plant with roots. It is best to cut cuttings on the day of the fruit according to the lunar sowing calendar. From that moment on, I put the cuttings on the seedling rack and begin to illuminate with fluorescent lamps for 12-14 hours. November-December is the most unfavorable time for plants due to the short daylight hours, and in many indoor plants, life processes freeze during this period. In addition, if you leave the cuttings on the windowsill, they will be cold from the windows (I do not glue them for the winter, because the apartment is very warm, and sometimes even hot).

In mid-December, I shorten the cuttings again, cutting off the rooted part, and change the water. Cuttings from lack of sunlight turn light green, but this is not scary.

Storage and care of vegetative cuttings of tomatoes

After January 15, I plant several of the thinnest cuttings with small roots in small pots with soil so that they do not die after the next pruning, and continue to light up. But you can not do this, because the number of cuttings I had prepared with a margin.

Once in the soil, these cuttings begin to grow, their stem thickens, and the leaves become darker. As soon as they grow up, I cut cuttings from them, root them in the same way in water, and the lower part of the plant gives stepsons and continues to grow. Then I also let these stepchildren to breed.

On a tomato that grows in a pot, I leave one stepson - it will be a continuation of the plant, which I later transplant into a deep pot at least 14 cm high and 11.5 cm in diameter at the top of the pot. Moreover, when transplanting, I remove its lower leaves and deepen the stem to the lower left leaf in order to build up a good root system. This plant will be a safety plant, if suddenly, when planting seedlings in a greenhouse, the tomatoes will die due to recurrent frosts. You don't have to do this if there are enough preserved cuttings.

For the cuttings remaining on the rack, I cut the roots for the last time in early February, leaving their lower part longer, and for the last time rooting in water. After the roots appear on the cuttings, it will be in the second half of February, I plant them in small pots or milk boxes, also removing 2-3 lower leaves and deepening the stem into the ground. As a result, most of the stem will grow a powerful root system. When planting, the roots should not be overgrown, no more than one centimeter long. With such small roots, the plant takes root better. Having finally hit the ground, the tomato plant begins to quickly grow its root system. I remove the emerging flowers. Until the end of February, these plants will still be on the backlit rack.

I prepare the land for all my seedlings in the fall. It is a mixture of sifted cucumber soil with sifted compost. In the spring I add a little coconut substrate, vermiculite, vermiculite, and a pinch of AVA fertilizer (powder) to it. I fill the pots with this mixture. In each of them I put the drug Glyocladin - one tablet in the center of the pot with earth: no smaller than one centimeter from the top of the pot. This is a new drug that has proven itself very well. It suppresses the pathogenic microflora, releasing the beneficial one. After planting the plant, I sprinkle 10-13 HB-101 peas on top of the ground.

At the end of February, I expose the seedlings in pots on the windowsill. I attach foil behind the plants to make them lighter from the reflected light. After a week, the leaves darken and acquire a color similar to that of sown seedlings of other varieties and newly acquired hybrids. As soon as the seedlings grow, I remove the lower leaves and transplant them into a pot of a larger diameter and deep, covering the stem with soil to the remaining leaves in order to build up a good root system.

I take care of the usual seedlings. I feed the seedlings once a week with the Ideal fertilizer (2 caps per liter of water), alternating feeding with HB-101 solution (2 drops per liter of water) and Extrasol solution.

At the beginning of March, I take out these seedlings on a glazed (but not insulated) balcony for hardening, as soon as the temperature there is at least + 8 ° C. How I temper tomato and cucumber seedlings, I will write in the next article.

I planted these hardened seedlings in a greenhouse on April 14, covering them with white dense spunbond. The plants already had the first flower brushes. She survived five recurrent frosts, during the most extreme of them the temperature dropped to -5 ° C. I want to say right away that the yield of plants obtained during the winter storage of cuttings did not decrease - they thanked them with an excellent harvest, delighting them with fruits ripened on the vine until early October and even later.

I think this method will be appreciated by pensioners who count every penny.

Thanks to the winter method of storing cuttings of hybrid tomatoes, there is no need to buy expensive seeds, sow them again and wait: they will rise or not. Winter care for cuttings does not cause any special problems: you need to wash the jars several times, change the water there and cut off the grown cuttings. And then plant them in pots with nutritious soil in a timely manner. By the way, in the same way, you can make perennial and indoor tomatoes intended for growing on the windowsill. As a rule, these are undersized plants with small fruits.

Olga Rubtsova, gardener,

candidate of geographical sciences

Vsevolozhsky district of the

Leningrad region

Photo by the author