Perennial Tomato Experiment!

[marchogaeth]

When I worked in Czechoslovakia (as it was then), I visited a vineyard where they unhooked the vines from their wires every winter and laid them on the ground. They covered them in straw/dried bracken and then piled about 18" of manure on top. The vines spent all winter like this, often under a covering of snow at temperatures many degrees below zero. I have often wondered if toms/peppers etc would respond to this treatment but of course the vines had lost all their leaves before they were laid down.

[VolesAteMyPeas]

How are everyone's toms doing so far? The two I kept in pots in a cold frame outside got blight! The ones I took cuttings of and brought indoors are fine. I have one cut down and insulated on the plot. I have no idea how that's doing. Won't know until March!

[noviceveggrower]

Mine seem to be doing ok. Watered them a little but not to much. One had a flower but got a bit battered when the blow away blew away.

[Bigmallly]

Have no idea how they are doing VAMP, mine are cut down and are now under a foot of shredded paper.........

[Penellype]

Mine are all indoors on windowsills now. Some are still fruiting, others are producing new shoots from the bottom.

[Bigmallly]

What do you do with the new shoots Pene?..........cut them off or just leave them alone?

[Penellype]

I let them grow to produce tomatoes. But they are in a centrally heated room so they don't ever get really cold. Last winter growth was slow but i had tomatoes on and off all winter. The year before, when they were in the kitchen, which was cold at night (no heating at all in there, since upgraded!), they didn't do much after January so I threw them out.

[lottie dolly]

Only just seen this thread,last week i did similar in the grow barn,toms still coming on some plants,others have no leaves at all,having read this,i will join you,also cut a out a bit stem with a small side chute on,is now in water,was thinking along the lines of VC last year,only thing is,i was so engrosed at clearing /tiding up in there i did not take any notice of the variety,the main thing being,it's possible developement,

[Snadger]

Wot LD sez above.

Can't be arrised to go right through the thread but do know there was a scrumptious small yellow tomato that was doing the rounds at the allotments for many a year. Elbow cutting were taken near the end of the growth season and kept warm until the spring. Half a dozen plot holders then progressed the clone the following season ad infinitum!

[BertieFox]

Almost all tomatoes are annuals so you have as much chance of getting them regrow as you have with any other annual flower or vegetable. Of course, there is the Tree Tomato (Cyphomandra betacea) which is a perennial tree but that is only remotely related.

I wonder if a more productive way of keeping tom plants going would be in taking repeated sideshoot cuttings which would give you a 'new' plant you could keep going through winter with heat and light. I have just tried one but unfortunately without extra bottom heat it seems to have given up the ghost, while the early ones always root easily.

I would be absolutely gobsmacked if your experiment works... but though it has 0% chance of working, I wish you luck!

[veggiechicken]

I've tried the repeated sideshoot cuttings method, keeping the cuttings in water on the kitchen windowsill. Problem was, they became leggy very quickly, so cuttings taken from the tops were better.
I'll probably try that again this year.

[Penellype]

This spring I tried the water method alongside the method I usually use which is to stick the sideshoot into a 3.5 inch pot of compost and put a plastic bag over it, held in place with an elastic band. I found the plants in the pots did much better than the ones in water, which tended to come out both leggy and bent.

I take the bag off when I see signs of growth - either in the tops or roots emerging from the holes at the bottom of the pot.

[VolesAteMyPeas]

Well, Bertie, my approach has been to take cuttings from my best plants and the aim is to keep them going through winter. They're on the kitchen windowsill and if they stay alive for couple more months then I'll have a head start! That's all I'm hoping for as the growing season here is pretty short and I have no greenhouse or tunnel.
In the name if experiment, I have cut two to the ground, but like I say, they are already blighted! No hope for those.

[VolesAteMyPeas]

From what I've read, tomatoes ARE perennials. It's just the cultivating climate has traditionally required them to be treated as annuals. In the tropics and areas to which the tomato is native, they are most certainly perennial.

[Penellype]

I wouldn't try to keep plants that have blight. All you will do is give the blight something to overwinter on, and it will be ready to infect your new plants next year. I'd dig the blighted plants up and get rid of them.