Pollinating Indoor Plants Without Bees Cloning Tomato Plants

Have you ever wondered how plants in an indoor aquaponics system get pollinated?  This is a bit of an issue because no one wants bees living inside their house.  Well, my husband has found a very simple way to pollinate the vegetable plants growing in our basement using a tiny paintbrush. 

He is also "cloning" the tomato plants in our aquaponics system and planting the new plants in our outdoor gardens.  Tomato plants have a unique quality which allows you to clip their branches and replant them to start a new tomato plant.  We have been very successful cloning the tomato plants growing in our aquaponics system. We automatically have a jump-start on our outdoor tomato plants because the new cloned plants start out around 8-12" tall. 

In his latest video, Todd will show you how he pollinates and clones our plants.  During the video he also, ironically, gets stung by a random bee that made its way into our house!

Aquaponics Walkthrough Episode 9 - Pollinating and Cloning Indoor Plants





This post was shared at:  The Backyard Farming Connection, HomeAcre Hop, Simple Lives Thursday, Homestead Barn Hop

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Cheap and Easy Tomato Supports How to support large quantities of toma

Every year I deal with this same problem, how to support all of these tomatoes!

Here are the best tomato cages Ive ever used:

And here are cheaper, shorter galvanized cages:

All of these products and more recommended items from the SSL Family are available at the

Simple Suburban Living General Store

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Suburban Aquaponics The Tomato Clone Army

We have been extremely happy with the progress of the tomato plants a few weeks after cloning them from an aquaponics system.  We have learned the benefits of taking clippings from the tomato plants we are growing indoors and using them to get a jump start on the growing season. 



I have cloned about nine or ten tomato plants of various types and planted them in our outdoor garden beds. The growth compared to the other tomatoes that we planted from seed or seedlings is amazing.

We have one plant that is now over 5 feet tall (about 1.5 meters) and contains over 100 tomatoes already.

Here are some tomato clones planted within the new fruit bushes:

And here are the tomatoes started as seedlings in the square foot garden.  There is just no comparison, the clones growth far exceeds these plants.  They are only about 18" - 24" tall.

Next year, we plan to scale the operation a bit and get several types of tomatoes started indoors in the aquaponics system.  They grow very fast in aquaponics, so we can take several large cuttings per week from each plant and start cloning. This way, we can have a sizable garden ready to plant when the weather breaks in the spring.

This is the first year we have grown tomatoes at our new home and we already cannot wait for next season!




This post has been shared at:  The HomeAcre Hop, Simple Lives Thursday, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, Front Porch Friday

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