How I Cloned My Hoy Tomato Plants

Ten days ago I was in my Wisconsin garden where I'm growing only growing 1 variety of tomato plant and that is the Hoy tomato which produce 2 lb + tomatoes.  I decided to clone a few and grow them indoors this winter in hydroponics.  The picture above are my clones at 10 days old and it's past time to get them into the hydroponic unit.  Below is a video posted from my friend Dale over on YouTube who I sent seeds to last year.  He only grew one plant and had a tomato over 2 lbs.

The reason I decided to clone this variety is due to the fact that our spring was very cold and the ones in the garden had a late start.  I'm trying to preserve the seeds and keep them genuine without cross pollination since these seeds cannot be purchased.  All I did was simply cut off a few suckers off from the mother plant and keep them in water until I was able to get them inside to work with them.  You can see me cutting them in the video below (it's about 3/4 through the video at 6:04).

So what I do is take the cuttings and give them a new diagonal fresh cut, dip them in TakeRoot rooting hormone, and then put them in wet rockwool cubes.  As you can see my rooting hormone is quite old because a little goes a long way.

At this point I put the plants in an empty ice cream bucket, mist them once a day with water, and cover with plastic to hold the moisture in.  I keep them under fluorescent lights that are on 16 hours per day.  You will see roots poke out at about day six.  It is at this time you can put them in your hydroponics unit or back to dirt.

This method works every time no fail as you can see from the top photo.