Test: Rooting Determinate Tomato Branches (update included)

Marilyn and I went to a garden center today to buy a container tomato plant. I was looking very intently for the right plant. There was only one container plant called, Patio.

As I was about to pick up a pot, these arms can out of nowhere and grabbed one of the pots before me. I replied, "That's the same kind of plant, I'm going to buy." The lady with the two kids replied that she was going to plant it in a bucket. They do it each year. I went on to tell her my trick of using a PVC pipe and filling hay or mulch around it and growing in the planting hole. She politely acted like she understood and then I opened my big mouth about biochar. I can hear it now when she got home to tell her husband, "Honey, you won't believe the weirdo who bothered me at the store. He grows in sewer pipe (I forgot to tell her to take the pipe out of the bucket after she filled it with soil) and he makes this char stuff from his garbage can that is supposed to help grow plants. I wonder why they let these crazies out to bother the public?" 

The next time when conversing with people I'm going to hand out my blog address in a business card and keep my mouth shut about details. Let that be a lesson to you when you go to explain your techniques in a few sentences. Face it, we go beyond simple gardening of throwing a seed in the ground and watching it grow.

I got the plant safely home and decided to try to root some of the lower leaf branches. Experts in rooting say you should use suckers. Determinate plants when young have very few if not any suckers. This is a test to see if I can get small leaf branches to root and perhaps grow a sucker. I would suggest waiting until your plant gets a sucker before rooting. Why waste your time growing branches with just leaves unless it works.

Definition:tomato sucker is a small shoot that grows out of the joint where a branch on the tomato plant meets the stem.

I prepared two small cups and punched holes in the bottom.

I placed mulch at the bottom and filled the cup up with topsoil. The last few inches at the top I used potting soil. I thoroughly watered the cups before planting. 

Thin each branch to two leaves and moisten bottom with water and dip in rooting powder.

"Try natural rooting hormones, honey or aloe vera slime I have used both but aloe vera seems to work best and not a ant attractant" JLD (Horticulturist, AS) 

Use a pen to punch a hole in the soil and plant branches.

Place cups in water in a partially filled container. I used rain water.

Finished/Done/Completed

This is the parent tomato plant that now resides in a food grade bucket.

Happy rooting but try to find a sucker. 

Update: Leaf branches do not root. Use only sucker branches. I enclosed a picture of a close-up of a sucker. It needs to be at least 6-8 inches long before rooting. 

Leaf branches die while sucker branches live if they are 6-8 inches long.