Yes, You Can Grow More Tomatoes From Store-Bought Tomatoes. Here's How

If you've got some spare grocery store tomatoes lying around at home, you could turn them into a tasty marinara sauce — but one less obvious idea is that you can actually plant them and grow more tomatoes. Sure, we all know tomatoes have seeds, but actually planting them isn't something most of us think about.

To do this, you don't want to just stick a whole tomato into some soil. You'll want to slice the tomato around a quarter- to half-inch thick, arrange those slices on some soil, and cover them with a thin layer of soil. To get them to sprout properly, you'll want the soil to stay moist (but not soaked). Use a pot with drainage holes to ensure this. The pot or plot where the seeds are planted should get a mix of shade and sun, too.

Within around two weeks, the seeds should sprout — and a tomato has a lot of seeds, so you can expect a lot of sprouts. You don't want to try to grow them all. Instead, try to pick the strongest ones, which you can transfer to individual pots to grow up to full-size. But don't be expecting to harvest tomatoes quickly, as the process from seed to a plant that bears fruit takes months. And when (or if) you do get tomatoes sprouting, be careful not to leave them on the vine so long they start to split; split tomatoes can be edible, but they're not ideal.

While the idea of turning supermarket produce into a whole new plant sounds neat, there are a few catches to know. Generally speaking, you won't know exactly what you're getting. Supermarket tomatoes may have been bred to grow in a greenhouse or in a tropical climate (this is how you get tomatoes in winter): a problem if you're not growing them in the same setting. Plus, they're also bred more for toughness and transportability rather than juiciness and flavor. That breeding means that many supermarket tomatoes are hybrids, too — so there may be other genetic traits hiding in their genes, and you won't necessarily get the same tomatoes that you originally bought. For this reason, gardeners suggest using heirloom tomatoes for this method, which are basically purebred tomatoes.

While not exactly a complication, you need to think about the timing when you plant your tomatoes. If you live in a temperate climate (somewhere with defined seasons), you'll want to plant them around late winter to early or mid-spring in order for them to sprout and grow big enough to actually yield fruit that summer. You can plant them at another time, but they won't grow over winter and may need extra care to be kept alive. Ultimately, some who tried this say it's easier to just buy seeds that will cultivate well in your climate (plus, you can pick some easy-to-grow tomato varieties), but growing your own tomatoes from slices is still a nice trick.