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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.

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.

We have fruit....this was on Monday 19th April. They're a bit bigger now.



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.

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.

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.  :(

Quote from: Sally A on May 23, 2010, 20:47:32
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.

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.

Quote from: Sally A on May 26, 2010, 20:37:14
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)

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. :)

Good effort RobinOfTheHood, enjoyed following your progress

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

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).

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.