I always plant little tomato plant seedlings when I garden. But there is a way to start new little plants from the original seedlings.
Once the seedling begins to grow, it will probably grow “suckers” which sprout from between stems. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, see an image of suckers at the Gardener’s Journal site.) The key is to only remove suckers below the fruit producing area. Usually down by the first or second stems of the plant. The reason is to give the tomato plant fewer stems and leaves to deal with, sending production to the tomatoes themselves.
But the suckers can be turned into new plants! Warning if you live in an area of the country with a short growing season. The season is too short for these propagated plants to produce before the weather turns cold. I’ve tried.
The “sucker” below was pulled off one of my store bought plants and I simply stuck it into the dirt in my garden bed. Each day I gave it plenty of water, and in the beginning it looked droopy. But they come back and begin to grow (plenty of water is the key here).
It doesn’t get any easier to have yourself a new, free tomato plant!
The other sucker plant (below) was brought into the house and stuck in a vase of water for about a week, or until it sprouted little white roots. Then I put it out in the garden.
As you can see, the water grown sucker looks better than the one simply stuck into the dirt. But you can do it either way. I look forward to seeing if these free plants do grow tomatoes eventually. It may become too hot before they get the chance.
On a side note, this green pepper plant sprung up in the garden beneath my big pepper plant. I moved it to a better spot and it is growing nicely.
Be careful when weeding, and know what is what. I recognized the leaves of this little pepper and let it grow. It’s easy to simply pull out all the “weeds” and inadvertently remove a volunteer plant!
Thank you for sharing!
Hydrangeas Blue 