A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2005 broken cherry tomato branches

howdy y'all and good mernin
my cherry tom plant has 2 broken branches on it from the winds of the last storm. My query is... I have them supported so that the "wound" um... well let me say it this way. The spot where the branches are semi severed from the main stem are being supported so that the branch is still completely touching the main stem. Will it be ok? will the branches "mend"? I also noticed that the almost severed branches have "roots" on them. If I put them in dirt will they still grow?

I think you can put them in the ground sweetthing. But it's awfully late in the season. Not sure if you will get anything off of them since they will have to put their energy into rooting rather than fruiting lol.

Good luck with your project.

HI TK sweetness thanks for the reply.
How are you? I'm SOOOOOO sorry we didn't get a chance to stop by on the way back from Georgia.
The sad thing about my cherry tomato is that the branches that broke are LOADED with green tomatos. The leaves look great and you can't tell that they are broken. So I think they will be fine(I hope)

Weezie will know the answer to this one. I'm optimistic when thinking back to what Weezie says about this. I had a tomato plant break right in half. I left half in the ground and planted the broken half. Ended up with 2 tomato plants! Good luck with your cherries Phoenix.
Christina

Thank You Christina

that gives me hope

I have almost torn off branches before and tomatoes are great at surviving it! Thankfully.

A few weeks ago I accidently split the main stem of a small tomato plant. I thought it would die. But I made a "band-aid" out of a piece of soda straw. I just cut a 1.5 inch section of straw and split it. Then I eased it around the stem to hold it together. The plant is doing fine and seems to have healed. I left the band-aid in place to be safe. Good luck!

I have real bandaids on several of my tomato plants and they have bounced back very well from their injuries (often from me unintentionally abusing them). Yes, you can root those branches which are called suckers, either by putting them into a glass/jar/bucket of water or planting into the ground. I tend to have better luck doing the former and have 5 clones growing nicely with green tomatoes on them. I actually harvested the first of my Sungold OP cherry tomatoes off the clone yesterday. It's really the easiest way to propagate tomato plants and you don't have to sacrifice precious seed..not to mention the clone grows much faster than starting over from seed. To give you some perspective on whether you'd have time to reap a harvest if you planted your branch to form a clone...I transplanted a rooted clone from Munchkin's cherry tomato plant 2 weeks ago and he's got small fruit on it now..they're green and we're in Toronto, but he should have some ripe fruit from that clone before frost.

Let us know what you decide and how things go with your plant(s).

Cheers,
Julianna

You know, I must have been sleeping or
something on Sept 2., cause I didn't get to
alot of posts on that date???
Boy, I should stay outta the game room I guess..

How did your tomato plant do Phoenix????

You got some great advice there!!
Hope your mater plant made it!!!!!!