GROWING TOMATOES BY 



TIP-CUTTINGS 



George B. Durham 

 Connecticut Agricultural College, Starrs 



THK common garden tomato, 

 Lycopersiciim esculentum, a native 

 of Central America, Peru, and the 

 southern parts of the I'nited States, has 

 been known by ci\iHzation for several 

 centuries. Although itscultivation as 

 a vegetable dates only to the seven- 

 teenth century much progress in breed- 

 ing has been made since that time. 



Propagation by all breeders has been 

 by seeds and in a very few cases by 

 cuttings of the terminal buds. In one 

 experiment* on tip cuttings vs. plants 

 grown from seed, it was shown that 

 with about twenty plants the average 

 production for the tip cuttings was 75 

 fruits W'eighing 163.35 ounces, com- 

 pared with 53 fruits weighing 148.3 

 ounces for the plants grown from seed. 

 All plants were started at the same time 

 but the plants from the tip cuttings 

 matured fruits one month earlier than 

 those grown from seed. 



PROPAGATION' BY BUD SPROUTS 



While on this problem the writer 

 conceived the idea of propagating by 

 means of the sprouts from adventitious 

 buds which appeared on the leaves of 

 plants that had been cut back and 

 heavily forced. 



Cuttings were taken from the variety 

 "Comet" and rooted in a dark, moist 

 chamber. Within ten days from the 

 time the cuttings were taken, they had 

 formed sufficient roots to insure pot- 

 ting. Later these plants were trans- 

 ferred to the regular raised benches and 

 in 116 days from the day that the cut- 

 tings were taken the first ripe fruit was 

 picked. 



Within five weeks all the fruits had 

 ripened. In a comparison between the 

 leaf cuttings and ten plants each of 

 "Noroton" and "Farquhars Bounti- 

 ful," planted alternately in the beds, 

 the following results were obtained: 



From these leaf-cutting plants other 

 leaf cuttings were taken. These were 

 budded when cut and matured fruit 

 from the first blossoms. They took 

 about six weeks to mature fruit and the 

 total production per plant was about 

 20 fruits averaging 2.1 ounces. The 

 plants were grown in cold frames and 

 did not seem to thrive so well as the 

 parent plants, due possibly to change 

 in environinent. 



From these second generation cut- 

 tings other cuttings were taken and 

 grown under the same cultural con- 



ditions as the original parent. These 

 cuttings were over four inches long and 

 some were in blossom, one of them 

 having set a fruit. This fruit ripened 

 in 31 days from the time the cuttings 

 were taken and weighed only .8 of an 

 ounce. The other fruits were small 

 averaging 1.3 ounces with less than 15 

 to a plant. 



DEGENERATION AFTER FIRST 

 GENERATION 



This tin- author took as sufficient 

 evidence to show that after the first 



' Stevens, A. T. and Durham, G, 

 Dept.. Conn. Agr. College. 



B. 1917. Tomato Breeding. Unpublished, on file in Hort. 



40 



