KK posted this piccy back awhile ago. I recall commenting that I thought that they were root nodes rather than scarring or reactions from/to "aphid bites" or "sucker bugs. I did a little experiment to demonstrate what I was talking about: Here in the first pic is a branch that I had cut off the mother plant as a part of the second pruning of the season. Can you see the nodes along the branch? I simply cut off the stem below the nodes and cut-away most of the leaves on the portion of stem that I wanted to experiment with. I then simply shoved it into the ground a few cm's from the greenhouse path. Here it is about three weeks later. Just look how well it is doing. All that I did was to water it regularly (without any sort of fertilizer at all...just plain rain water). Then finally, today I removed the stem from the soil and look--it has produced plenty of roots from the nodes that were along the stem. I wonder, since you have a much longer season there, if you couldn't repeat this same procedure when you prune or remove suckers from your plants. Just imagine that you had a long bed for your toms and you planted say, four plants-- leaving the rest of the bed empty. Then every time you pruned, you could simply stick branch cuttings into the empty bed and get a succession of tom plants that would begin producing flowers and fruits for an extended period of time. Something to think about? At any rate, perhaps this experiment will be interesting to any folks that did not recognize the small "bumps" as being nodes. Toms are remarkable resilient plants that have strong survival strategies. Naturally in the face of a bacterial or viral insult, they cannot survive...but when your plant breaks or is crushed, there is still hope.
S, I actually do plant my suckers when they are exceptionally nice or I have had a plant die out. Sometimes I just have a hard time throwing them in the compost. It seems so wasteful to me if I need another plant and It takes muck more time to start it from seed. I have two still sitting in pots in front of one greenhouse and they have ripe tomatoes on them even thought they are fairly small plants.
Nice experiment Sjoerd... I WISH ALL Plants would have such power. Imagine rooting orchids, hibiscus, etc in such a "piece-of-cake" manner!
Thanks for your responces. I have only supplimented my small group of toms a time or two when the plants were destroyed by rodents. I wish that the growing season here was longer, I would plant those toms in succession and prolong my harvest. I'm with you Calin--it would cut down on costs and be a tad easier to keep certain plants in adequate numbers. Well, it is nice to think about it, isn't it.
S, how long is your growing season? can you plant successively every 2 or 3 weeks? would that make a difference on your length of harvesting? We plant every two or 3 weeks depending on the weather and the crop. Tomatoes we plant on the 15th or so of March inside the high tunnel with wall o waters around them and then the 15th or so of April and then again in May (outside for the April and May ones) in Wall o Waters, again depending on the weather of course. Then on July 1st I planted up the greenhouse with tomatoes and peppers. This past Sat I realized we still have a good two to three months of growing temperatures (hopefully) so I started beets, broccoli and carrots in another garden and two weeks ago I put in a second crop of potatoes for an "experiment" to see how late I could put in a crop and still get it harvested...nothing ventured, nothing gained, I guess.
The growing season where I live is about three months, but it totally depends upon the weather, which determines the sort of season that we will have. I can plant some things successively, but not things like toms. It sounds like you have a nice, long and warm growing season there (lucky so-'n-so, you! We do not have a lot of warmth here, which is a big reason that we can't grow a lot of veg for extended periods of time. Another prob is ...room. The plots are small. Anyway, I hope that you continue have lotsa luck in the gardens and at the markets.
Oh my! I didn't realize how short of a season you were working with. We have about 2 months of cool(March and April) to never know what it will do, rain or snow... 4 months of decent to HOT weather (May to Sept) and 6 months of anything from cool to down right horrible (Oct to Feb.). You never know what it will be like. Freezing, from Nov. to March, or not. Last year was the warmest I can ever remember for a winter season. I think you need a real greenhouse to grow in....I think that weather would drive me crazy. I guess Alaska was not much of a challenge to you then for Gardening, huh?
Yes C--it is sometimes a bit of a challenge gardening here as so much has to happen in such a short period of time. It is handy when things like tomatos have this built-in ability to continue living in the face of serious trauma. The summers in Alaska had plenty of light, but I had so time then. I recall that when I was loving there, one could buy postcards that had one of those enormous cabbages that folks would grow there and it had a moose on one of the leaves.
Sojerd thank you very much, those were excatly my same thoughts while reading your post. Replanting pruned stems here might be a problem here because of the very high temperatures unless some kind of shade can be provided with very consistent watering. If things goes as planned, I'll be planting another bed of tomatoes around September or November. Question. 1.How to prune a tomato plant? I never knew that the plant had to be pruned until now. 2.Is there any particular system to prune it? 3.Does pruning helps in the yeild or growth of the plant? The bed where the tomatoes were planted is now planted with long bean and I am getting lots of them everyday. Long Beans ( photo / image / picture from KK Ng's Garden ) This is my first experience with long beans and I am surprised that it is easy to grow.
Hello KK-- In answer to your questions: 1)-- The first question. First of all it is important to know which type of tomato habitus your plant has. Simply put--"bushy" or "cordon". If it is a "bush type", then you do not prune at all. If it is a "cordon" type, then you need to regularly remove the suckers that come in-between the stem and branches. I also remove branches or parts of branches as the season goes on. Because I want my plants top put more energy into the development of the tomato fruits and less into foliage. The further into the season I get the more trusses of toms there are....and the more trusses of toms there are, the less branches I want to have on the plant. Towards the end of the season, I can determine when the blooms and small toms that are present on the plant will never reach maturity--and then I cut the top off to stop vertical growth. BTW KK-- I like those beans very much. We call them kousebanden here. They are delicious to my palate. The word, kouseband means "garter". In the old days women used to use a sort of elastic circle to hold up their stockings. :-D chuckle.
Thanks Sojerd, never knew that there are the bush and cordon type. I am getting the seeds from the seed supplier and I guess I'll go with the bush types. Yes those beans are delicious just plain fried with eggs like a pancake...yummie!!!
