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Produce => Under Glass => Topic started by: RobinOfTheHood on September 19, 2009, 20:13:11
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Has anybody ever tried this? I'm considering trying it for the Sungolds, I'm sick of getting a 6 week harvest period.....
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That's probably a no, then.
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I've never tried it personally, but my grandfather used to take cuttings from the top of his favourite plants & overwinter them. ;)
I reckon his success rate was in excess of 75%... He always had selection of 12-18 inch plants by the beginning of March.
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Have you considered investigating as to why you are getting such a low harvest rate?
If you have the facilities to successfully overwinter a tomato plant, you should equally be able to start and grow seedlings very early in the season, sowing Feb-Mar for cropping from mid June onwards into October.
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I'm going to try but not in any expensive way. I took cuttings in June from my outdoor toms to grow on in the greenhouse to help extend my season into early winter.
two of those plants are in the kitchen on a sunny window sill and one of them (a cherry called 'Galina') are showing root buds six inches or so from the tip of the plant so i plan to nip it off and root then pot up keeping it on the window sill. the plant already has fruit which are beginning to colour up so this should speed it up although i am still harvesting my outdoor ones and the tip has flower buds so more fruit is possible if i can keep the cutting healthy.
i think anymore cuttings i take will only be from the cherry varieties (i have 'gardeners delight' and 'broad ripple yellow current' in the greenhouse) as they are earlier fruiting.
I'm in Kent, if you try it too maybe we can compare notes.
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I can't see it working not enough daylight hours, not warm enough so the taste won't be good.
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One thing I tried last year that seemed to work was cutting down on watering the tomato plants in October, and stopping watering altogether after that. This way I was still harvesting tomatoes after Christmas....not a huge amount but it kept them going!
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The idea was just to get an early start next year and to get plants that were a bit stockier by taking cuttings rather than sowing seed early, not to keep harvesting - the plants are about 9 feet tall and in the border now! :)
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Try one of the eastern european varieties and sow them in January... I grew Black Krim beefsteaks this year indoors and they were astonishingly early for me, I'm going to really try to push these forward next year both outdoors (under fleece in a hotbed) and in the GH and see how early I can get them..... it shouldn't take too much time as they'll be starting after the big onions but before the standard maincrops, for the first batch, then again in the gap between the standard onions and the hardy veg for anther set.... I've got tons of seeds so if they fail I'll still have plenty to run through "normally"
chrisc
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I am having a go at this. the gardeners delight that I planted this year have just about done. so I have trimmed some of the plants down to 6inch (but still have leaves on and a sucker growing at the side), took them out of the buckets they were in and trimmed the roots so they fit in a 1litre pot, I might bring them inside and keep them slightly moist or keep them in the garage again slightly moist, I have green zebra as well, but they still have lots of toms on, but once they are finished, again I will trim down and try and keep them some where warm.
i want to also try this with a bell pepper and chilli plant too.
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The idea was just to get an early start next year and to get plants that were a bit stockier by taking cuttings rather than sowing seed early, not to keep harvesting - the plants are about 9 feet tall and in the border now! :)
oh! :-[
I am having a go at this. the gardeners delight that I planted this year have just about done. so I have trimmed some of the plants down to 6inch (but still have leaves on and a sucker growing at the side), took them out of the buckets they were in and trimmed the roots so they fit in a 1litre pot, I might bring them inside and keep them slightly moist or keep them in the garage again slightly moist, I have green zebra as well, but they still have lots of toms on, but once they are finished, again I will trim down and try and keep them some where warm.
i want to also try this with a bell pepper and chilli plant too.
so i am not on my own then :). i didn't think about simply cutting back the plants, that a good idea.
One thing I tried last year that seemed to work was cutting down on watering the tomato plants in October, and stopping watering altogether after that. This way I was still harvesting tomatoes after Christmas....not a huge amount but it kept them going!
i am assuming they were in a greenhouse, was it heated or unheated?
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I have an unheated greenhouse.......the years I have tried to get plants to fruit earlier , the plants that went in later always caught them up really quicky and negated any advantage, so I don't bother trying to get super early crops anymore!
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Update:
of the 4 plants that I tried to overwinter from cuttings, only one survived the lobby windowsill. From that I got 5 cuttings and now have 5 sungolds, 2 of which have flower trusses, and one of these has a sideshoot almost ready for taking as a cutting. The other 3 are healthy enough too, so I'd call that a success, so far at least. :)
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well done, thanks for the update!! ;)
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Try one of the eastern european varieties and sow them in January... I grew Black Krim beefsteaks this year indoors and they were astonishingly early for me, I'm going to really try to push these forward next year both outdoors (under fleece in a hotbed) and in the GH and see how early I can get them..... it shouldn't take too much time as they'll be starting after the big onions but before the standard maincrops, for the first batch, then again in the gap between the standard onions and the hardy veg for anther set.... I've got tons of seeds so if they fail I'll still have plenty to run through "normally"
chrisc
Hah the best laid plans of mice and men eh?.... Given that broad beans keeled over from the cold I can't see even a POlish tomato surviving what we've just had.... I'm still finding frost inside the GH most mornings.....
chrisc
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It sounds rather a good idea to keep a tomato plant indoors over winter and keep taking cuttings. Might try that next year.
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Well, here they are, the original surviving plant had a single flower truss on it when I took cuttings. All 4 now have them, and the greenhouse is warming up nicely which along with the increasing light gives me hope for fruit fairly soon.
Might need to get a water spray on the trusses later today to be sure though.
(http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg181/ROTHofA4A/Sungold.jpg)
Crap picture I know, but you get the idea. ::)
Might try to see how many years I can keep a single plant going...
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Nice one Robin. ;D ;D ;D
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I planted some 'balconi yellow' in Nov (the year before last) in the conservatory. They did stop growing over winter, but I think it was May we got the first tomatoes. They went out into the greenhouse in spring. They did keep cropping through to Nov. These are very small dwarf plants.
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Well, here they are, the original surviving plant had a single flower truss on it when I took cuttings. All 4 now have them, and the greenhouse is warming up nicely which along with the increasing light gives me hope for fruit fairly soon.
Might need to get a water spray on the trusses later today to be sure though.
(http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg181/ROTHofA4A/Sungold.jpg)
Crap picture I know, but you get the idea. ::)
Might try to see how many years I can keep a single plant going...
well done Robin of the Hood !! keep us updated on their progress?
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Last year I bought two shirley tomato plants (99p each), took the side shoots as cuttings and finished up with16. The cuttings caught up with the parent plants by mid season.
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Instead of taking cuttings to get through Winter, why not do it with seedlings. I have 5 seedlings of 'Siletz' which are about 20cm high at the present time and will be potted up to 140mm pots later today, in which they'll start the cooler weather in before going to a 20cm pot and hopefully be still growing when the warmer Spring weather arrives. The advantage I have is that I have more Winter daylight here than what you do, plus we don't get snow.
Seedling photo in my Gallery.
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We have fruit....this was on Monday 19th April. They're a bit bigger now.
(http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg181/ROTHofA4A/P1010117.jpg)
Beats my usual dates by a long way, I'll definitely do it again this way. I reckon the advantage of cuttings is that they are already flowering, earlier than a seedling would be.
They are still being moved inside (the big shed) of an evening because of the frosts, but that's a small price to pay.
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When clearing out the greenhouse last year at the end of October, I found a seedling (probably a Gardener's Delight), potted it up and brought it indoors, as it grew another 19 seedlings popped up from the soil.
Anyhow, fussed and pampered it overwinter, it currently has 4 trusses and one on the way, one of it's later germinating siblings also has 4 trusses - the largest tomato is Gardeners Delight sized but still green. I have 4 overwintering plants that I have kept in the house - just enough to hopefully get me an early mini harvest, but not so many that hubby gets snotty about too many plants. ;)
In 2009 I did an early sowing on 20th Jan and got my first tomato on 18th May.
Am just waiting to see if the overwintering one beats that.
PS. They are kept in the unheated 8x4ft porch at the front of our south facing house.
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Well, the Gardeners Delight full sized toms have not shown any signs of ripening ::) so the overwintering 2009-2010 experiment is behind my January sown seeds of 2009. :(
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Well, the Gardeners Delight full sized toms have not shown any signs of ripening ::) so the overwintering 2009-2010 experiment is behind my January sown seeds of 2009. :(
You did well to try it and are to be congratulated anyway. Experiments usually teach something even if the results aren't what we'd hoped.
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Since my last post here - 3 days ago - the most advanced tomato is now somewhere between orange and red. Still quite a lot of green at the stem end, but am sure it's not greenback as Gardener's Delights have a habit of being a stronger green near the stem.
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Since my last post here - 3 days ago - the most advanced tomato is now somewhere between orange and red. Still quite a lot of green at the stem end, but am sure it's not greenback as Gardener's Delights have a habit of being a stronger green near the stem.
........and today it's red :) will eat it tomorrow, fresh off the plant, in a roll for lunch 8)
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Update - I now have 10 plants from the single surviving overwintered sungold, and all have fruit. I have been harvesting dribs and drabs for roughly 3-4 weeks.
BUT - the fruit is very small and the plants are quite spindly. I expect it to improve in the next couple of weeks, but I probably won't bother again.
Worth a try, though. :)
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Good effort RobinOfTheHood, enjoyed following your progress
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I'll be trying to overwinter some plants this year.... I've got a lot of heirloom things that I don't really want the hassle of tracking down , and in the case of Kirschklumpen, they're expensive too. I've already managed to strike 6 extra Kirschklumpen (I'd be proud, but tomatoes are the easiest cuttings ever...) so hopefully side-shoot cuttings off those six will give me some small plants I can overwinter...
Would they be better on a West or East facing windowsill.... I don't have any south-facing ones at all...
chrisc
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Why not just save the seeds Chris? so long as they are not F1's you should be fine, and most heirloom varieties aren't.
I love watching jars of tomato seeds fermenting away on the window sill (it must be the secret mad scientist in me).
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Great thread. Am trying this myself with a couple of seedlings that popped in the compost when I sowed some overwintering lettuce about 4 weeks ago.
The tomato plants are now about 8 inches tall & look so healthy that it seemed a shame to bin them so have potted them on and brought them indoors.
We'll see if they survive.