If you spend any time on social media, you will undoubtedly have seen this "hack" everywhere. Slice a tomato, plant the slices and viola, you have loads of free tomato plants. But if I'm being perfectly honest with you - in most circumstances this idea sucks. Let me explain why.
Why Is This A Bad Idea
Let me just start by saying this will work, and you will get lots of tomato plants in most cases. The only case you wouldn't is if the seeds were sterile but most will be perfectly fine, that isn't the issue.
Well, I say issue, but I actually have a few issues with this idea.
The first issue I have is that the tomato you are growing from is a supermarket tomato. It almost has to be, to be available at the time of year you would be starting
That is where all of the following issues come from. If you were doing this from a homegrown tomato to begin with then I don't have a problem with it, but our seasons make that almost impossible.
Hybrid?
Problem number one, there is a good chance the tomato you are growing is an F1 hybrid variety. Many of the tomatoes grown in supermarkets are.
There is no problem with this, many of the tomatoes you will grow from seed at home are also F1 hybrids. But there is one big problem when you try to grow from the seeds created by these plants.
This is because they don't grow true to type. Getting the correct seeds from an F1 hybrid is a very tricky and controlled process. This is why they cost so much more than a traditional tomato seed.
When grown from mass production for a supermarket these conditions are not followed. So the seed inside the actual tomato fruit is not guaranteed to produce a tomato plant anything like the parent, in fact they often produce plants with very poor characteristics.
So grow a tomato from a supermarket slice and there is a good chance the fruit you get off it will be nothing like the one you planted.
Poor Variety
So, you might not grow what you planted. But to be honest that isn't even my biggest gripe with this method. My real problem is supermarket tomatoes are crap, why would you want to grow one to begin with?
Homegrown tomatoes are miles apart, everyone knows this. But that doesn't magically come from being grown at home. Letting them ripen on the vine for longer will improve them, but there is one fundamental thing you cannot change - the variety grown.
Different varieties have different qualities, some produce more fruit, some have thin skins, some have thick, the list goes on and on.
And you may think well supermarket suppliers will grow the best of the best, why would they grow a subpar variety? And this is a fair point and also true, in its own way.
If we think about it then yes they do grow the best varieties, but the best for their needs - not for yours!
They want large harvests of big, identical tomatoes. But they also need them to store for a long time as they will often be shipped a long way before they make it to supermarket shelves. They will also be battered about during transit, so they need to be tough.
They are often also quite watery and hollow, they look good on the shelf like this and are also quicker to grow.
Taste doesn't matter, no one buys a supermarket tomato on taste as it is an impossible task. Often they don't even mention the variety, it is just a round tomato, or a plum or "vine tomato" like there are some mysterious tomatoes that don't grow on vines.
So even as an educated shopper how would you select for taste from this pointless choice? The answer is you can't, so taste isn't selected for. This is why homegrown tomatoes taste so much better, because the tomatoes we grow ourselves have been bred for taste.
What Are You Gaining
Finally, after all my ranting I have one final question for people who swear by this method. What are you gaining by doing it?
You don't know what will grow from these plants, and even if it does grow there are better varieties out there - and for what?
Tomato seeds aren't expensive to buy. You could buy a pack of heirloom seeds that will last 3 years or longer for roughly 99p!
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