Taking and propagating cuttings from successful fruiting and flowering plants is a great way of maintaining healthy plant stock without constantly having to fork out for new seeds. It allows you to select your best performing plants and effectively clone them. Cuttings contain the same genetic make-up as their parent plant and will display the same growth traits as they age. This is great if you have one tomato plant that yields a lot more fruit than the others as you can take cuttings from this one and have all of your plants perform to that level for your next crop.
The first thing you need to do is find a healthy growing tip that will make a good cutting. Not all plants will have that much material available that will make good cuttings but there are foliar sprays available such as Nitrozyme which can stimulate a flush of new growth that is ideal for cuttings. For the greatest chance of rooting success you ideally want to be looking to use new growth for your cutting as it is more likely to develop roots quickly.
You need to cut the healthy growing tip away from the plant approximately 10cm back from the tip. Make sure a clean scalpel is used to avoid and potential bacteria / bugs etc that could be transferred. For vastly improved chances of success, it is at this stage that you use a rooting hormone or gel. Dip your newly taken cutting into a rooting gel and leave for a minute or two. These rooting gels contain naturally occurring plant hormones that trigger root formation and massively increase the chances that each individual cutting will put down roots and successfully establish itself.
Your cutting is now ready to be located into its first growing medium. The choice of rooting substrates is very large and your choice should be led by the way in which you intend to grow the plants later in their lives. If for example you intend to grow in a hydroponics system, then you would use a hydroponics growing media such as a Grodan Cube or Perlite / Vermiculite mix. If you intend to grow your plants in pots of soil or coco, then you would transfer your plants to a small net pot containing a potting soil or coco fibre mix. Whichever growing media you choose, it needs to be pre-wet (damp but not dripping) with either plain water if the potting mix contains feed or a weak strength nutrient solution if the media is inert. The cutting should be inserted.
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