Last week we had a cold snap in Sydney. My highly productive tomatoes suddenly withered and went brown and crunchy.
Luckily the growing tips of the plants seemed mostly ok.
So I took some cuttings of these to re-plant.
I put the cuttings into some water, and they will soon sprout roots.
At this time I’ll replant them into the garden, and they should provide me with fruit through spring and early summer when my Summer tomatoes are not yet mature.
This process is described very throughly by Jodi. That’s how I learned this method, and it works!
I managed to save one plant, but the rest came out entirely. I planted out some of my overwintered capsicums and chillies, optimistically declaring that the worst of winter is behind us. I cut them back savagely, and they should reshoot when the weather warms a bit more.
Although I’m not completely sure they all survived the overwintering…
500m2 in Sydney 
Forgive me if my sympathy for your dying WINTER tomatoes isn’t brimming forth L! But I do love the propagation technique. I have an over wintered cap still in the garden looking very sad at this point, but as we only just got to double digits today I am not yet ready to declare winter over and give him a tidy up.
Hehe – well I certainly wasn’t expecting any sympathy from the Melbournians 🙂
I guess it would be a bit cheeky to mention that I made 2 litres of tomato sauce (ketchup) from the tomatoes remaining on the dead plants, wouldn’t it? ;P
I hope winter breaks for you soon.
Oh please, enough! On a positive, I just bought some truss tomatoes from the Farmers market, obviously greenhouse ones, but at least they’re a break from all the green veg on offer every week. That said it was a freezing morning, pouring with rain and ankle deep mud – made for the fastest (and thankfully child free) trip around the market of all time. We had to seek refuge in a nearby cafe just to see what we’d actually purchased!
Wow- that’s devotion to fresh produce for you!
I like your tomato cutting technique – I shall watch their progress with interest. On the chillies – I actually found that the plants I didn’t trim did better than those that I did trim last year but given your climate is a reasonably amount warmer you’ll hopefully get away with it. Um and yes I think you might be correct about the fate of those last two…
Oh no! Too late now I guess, but at least I hadn’t yet trimmed my tobago seasoning plant. I still hold out some hope for one of the dead-looking chillies because it looked just as dead last year when I trimmed it. Came back with a bang in spring, but this year I may not be so lucky.