I finally feel safe writing this entry as it has been a month and a half and most of the plants from this attempt are still alive!
Part1: Plant clippings
Over the 4th of July, P and I went to visit my mom and on the way back her friend generously loaded me up with clippings from her beautiful yard. When we got back I tore the house up looking for a bag of soil I put away during the last house organization. Unable to find it and one midnight trip to Home Depot later, I was ready to plant.
With fresh soil and a few pots, I planted 5 of the clippings in 2 larger pots. In the 2 smaller pots went another 3 clippings (one of the clippings snapped in half! So there was now 2 clippings of the same plant). Being pessimistic about this attempt, more than one clipping went into each pot, in hopes that one per pot would survive!
While I like the way each of these look I have no idea what kind of plants they are. The ones in the blue pot have been prolific and make a ton of little plantlings that it has been dropping in its pot.
As of today 8/23/16 all of the clippings in the clay pot have not made it (perhaps due to our long heat waves this summer). While the rest are happily alive. I ended up moving the babies from the blue pot so they can grow a bit bigger before being transplanted to their own pot.
Part 2: Tomatoes
Why stop at just plant clippings? We’re giving a solid attempt at growing plants this summer. Earlier in the year I’d watched a friends cats for a week (and also his tomato seedlings).
Long story short there were a ton of tomato plants that survived so much so that I ended up with 5 of them. P found a nice planter at BJ’s perfect for these guys and they were planted shortly after my cuttings from Florida.

Just after planting
These guys grew quickly. At this point I have a ton of flowers, which made me nervous about the weight of the potential future tomatoes. Another trip to Home Depot meant these guys now have stakes to help carry the weight and Velcro ties holding them to the stakes. I was really intrigued by the Velcro ties since they can be re-used and easily moved (Which was important with how fast these guys grew!).
Some research online led me to prune the plants as they grew to remove excess branches (suckers) growing from the nodes of the main stem. We’ll see how this goes.

The plants after tethering them to the stakes
With the heat from the last week or so the tomatoes that I had growing have appeared to slow down. Fingers crossed this cold front that’s passing though will lower the temperature so they can continue to develop.
All the pictures here!