Feeling the pinch? Use it to make more plants
Every summer I spend hours searching for, and pinching out, tomato sideshoots that grow between the plant stem and its main fruit-bearing branches. Most of them end up on the compost, but the rest I put to a much more profitable use.
These little unwanted shoots can be used as softwood cuttings to make more tomato plants, which is great when you consider that many tomato seed packets have a paltry number of seeds inside. Not only do the shoots help increase your plant stock, they will ripen later than your larger plants, extending the cropping season well into the autumn.
If you grow them in your greenhouse and maintain a steady feeding and watering regime, they will flourish even longer – last year an AG reader sent me a photo of their undercover tomato plants still producing fruits well into November.
While you pinch out your shoots, make sure plants remain healthy and aren’t being attacked by tomato moth caterpillars or whitefly. The caterpillars are easy to find and dispose of if you follow their trails of droppings, and I use the parasitic wasp Encarsia formosa as a biological control for whitefly.
Glasshouse red spider mite is another common undercover pest that can be deterred by raising the humidity, damping down the floor and placing trays of water around the greenhouse.
Shooting straight
Using unwanted growth
1. Pinch off any lower leaves but leave the top tuft in place.
2. Dip the end of the shoot in rooting powder or gel to encourage strong roots.
3. insert the shoots into pots of dampened seed compost that is mixed with perlite.
4. Seal in a clear plastic bag and place it somewhere light and warm, out of direct sunlight. Remove the bag when the shoots tale and grow.
Finding use in a broken pot
- While tidying the back of the shed I came across a stash of old broken pots that I’d set aside for crocks. Most of them were beyond use but there was one with a large chunk missing from one side (thank you hard frosts) that I reckoned was salvageable.
- Inspired by a garden I’d seen on holiday in Spain that was full of unusual pot plantings, I half-buried my container in a border at an angle. I then filled it with compost as usual, and added a mix of colourful bedding plants including zingy coleus and trailing petunias.
- It makes an attractive focal point in the border among the delphiniums, echinaceas and hollyhocks and can be used throughout the year with a variety of plantings.
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