Cloning tomatoes in cold climate (zone 3b)

Hi everyone!

As I am discovering the wonder of propagating plants, I've just found out about cloning tomatoes from suckers. It makes me wonder if I should start tomatoes earlier and grow fewer tomato plants for suckers and use that instead of seeds. I thought maybe some people tried this out in a cold climate? From my understanding, growing from suckers is more a thing in hotter climate as it is more easy to overwinter a tomato plant. Tomato seeds are also quite easy to harvest, so maybe I should stick to seeds? Are clone better than seeds?

Some tomato plants will be sterile and the seeds not viable, so clones would be a good choice for those

The Heirloom seeds are viable, last indefinitely, and may give you a hardier plant than clones.

Also some insect infections will follow clones, where growing from seed would eliminate this possibility...

Jordan, I haven't cloned tomatoes before but this could be a useful method in some circumstances. My preference is using seed for propagation mostly because I can use seed from the best performing plants and gradually create locally-adapted plants. The last two years have really shown me that my plants need to be not only locally adapted, but able to handle significant changes in weather. Last year was 105F with no rain, and this year record levels of rain and cold.

Clones won't give you anything different than the parental genetics, but if those are outstanding it might be worth cloning in order to obtain more seeds for future breeding.

My market gardening neighbor (not a permie, nor organic) uses cloning to multiply his transplants. He puts his initial transplants in the field. They are about a foot tall at this point. They grow about 6 weeks. When they begin to bloom, he cuts off large sucker sections about 2 to 3 feet long. He places then on top of a freshly tilled surface. He pours a liquid rooting agent over the length of the stem. Then he mounds up maybe 4 inches of soil over the stem, leaving about 8 inches of plant above ground, reaching for the sky. He spaces the visible plant's parts about 2 1/2 to 3 feet apart. Later, stakes will be put in place.

That's it. I watched him do this in ground that has seen no rain for 2 weeks. He does not expect to water them. Dunno about that part, our dry season is early this year... He said doing this also inceases the size of his tomatoes. It's the same as removing suckers. In the past, I didn't realize the side branches were suckeres! Ha. I can assure you, in past years, my Cherokee Purples were dinky compared to the same variety from his farm.

Poor tortured tomatoes. I'll be doing this at-home to increase my plants too! I will use willow water for my rooting agent as I have a number of trees. The Rural Sprout describes 5 natural rooting agents in this  article. Willow is included there.

We use Hormex liquid (they also have a rooting powder)

Dip the bottom of the cutting in pure Hormex for one minute and plant. Water the cuttings with 10 drops per gallon Hormex until rooted.

It helps to root into clear plastic party cups filled with soil (so you can see the roots pop) with holes drilled into the base of cups, placed in tray with one inch of hormex solution of 10 drops per gallon Hormex and R/O water.

The last step is not essential but it will increase your production

I am growing 10 tomato varieties this year and six of them are new to me. I only grow two plants for each kind because of limited space. I took suckers and potted them so if some varieties fail or I don't like the taste, I have bigger plants ready for replacement.

Do clones takes longer to grow tomatoes than original plant? If so, how long?

Aside from the clone being younger than the mother plant, nothing else will be different.

Awesome! I'm gonna try that