One Hundred Dollars a Month

One of our favorite readers, Lisa from Tasmania is at it again. I love when she sends over stories and pictures from her life in Australia. She’s shared amazing pictures of her garden and even a cute Easter craft. This time she’s talking tomato laterals:

Hi Mavis!

Your garden is looking amazing {as is all the work on the house- despite the HOA} 🙂

I am experimenting with growing tomatoes over winter this year… I took some laterals off a cherry tomato bush to use. I have nurtured a tomato over winter before, but I didn’t give it much love or attention. This time I aim to do better.

Free Tomato Plants

Before moving to Tasmania and diving all four feet into gardening with little experience, I had no idea how easy it was to grow tomatoes from laterals. To be honest I didn’t even know the difference between the leaf part and the lateral. Once I sorted that out and was shown what to do, I was hooked on growing more tomato plants from the existing ones. Also, I am not sure if it is true, but the plants I have grown from the laterals seem more vigorous than the ones I bought as seedlings or grew from seed.

You can easily see the lateral growing up in between the main stem and leaf. They are what you are meant to pinch off lower on the plant to promote bigger and more tomatoes on the remaining plant!! Sigh – one day I will actually get around to doing that!! Smile

When you find one of a reasonable size, pinch it off near the base and either stick it straight into the ground or a pot, or for lots more fun, in a glass of water on the kitchen window sill so you can see the action!

The first lateral I did, I chose one that was possibly too big and just shoved it in the veggie garden and proceeded to water it. It immediately fell over limp and sad and remained that way for about 2 weeks. For some optimistic reason I kept watering it. It finally came good and then just charged along and produced the most beautiful tomatoes! It was like magic!

The ones I have just had sitting on my kitchen window sill come from a cherry tomato plant.

The stems seemed to get a little hairy, but today I noticed the white roots just starting to show. Its taken about two weeks to get to this point. This was done with just plain water, but today after their photo session I gave them a bit of my kelp juice mix to give them a boost.

From here you can put them in the garden if the weather is warm enough. I am going to try to nurture these indoors over winter and hopefully I will be able to get a good number of laterals off them early next season. {I am pretty keen on my tomatoes!}

Often I have bought a couple of different tomato seedlings if my seeds are not doing what they are meant to do {grow} and have taken laterals off them once they are a bit established. Quite an inexpensive way to get lots of tomato plants!

I look forward to seeing lots of gardens via “One Hundred Dollars a Month” while I am sitting snugged up in front of the fire and you are enjoying your summer!

Cheers
Lisa