I was reading a post from Mother Earth News last spring that said you can grow tomatoes from a slice.
The post tells us that you can grow your tomato plants quicker and easier, following this easy-peasy tomato slice method. They sent me to the Little Things blog http://www.littlethings.com/grow-tomato-seeds/
Little Things demonstrates just how easy it is to take a tomato that’s past its prime, slice it up, and plant the slices. In about two weeks, you should have dozens of tomato plant starters. You can pick and choose the biggest ones to continue growing.
First, cut a tomato one quarter-inch thick. Throw the slices (in this case, four) onto a pot of compost. Then, throw potting soil and/or compost over the tomatoes until they’re barely covered. Water the pot sporadically. In 7-14 days, you should end up with 50-60 tomato seedlings. You can then pull out the larger seedlings and plant them in another pot, two plants per pot.
The MNN post goes on to say: And, if you’re worried about accidentally growing a tomato that contains GMO seeds, you don’t need to worry. There are no commercial GMO tomatoes on the market in the United States, according to NPR . Any tomato you’ve bought at the market can’t be grown from genetically modified seeds.
This is what I did…
I took their advice with some grape tomatoes that were going bad. I cut them in half and unlike the post, only one plant came up. Probably because I didn’t use compost and just put the slices in an old flower pot.
Just the same, I nursed it all summer and by the fall I had this glorious plant that was about 5 foot tall and had several small green tomatoes. Then came the frost…
I brought the plant inside and it is thriving. I am not really a gardener so I am thrilled as this is one of my first tomato plants and I grew it from a slice!
