Friday, July 9, 2010

Mutant Tomato Plant?

I have discovered a second mutant in my garden. The first was a sunflower that was all leaves. Seriously, the stem terminated with a weird orangey smooth spot and no flower bud ever formed while it's sibling next to it was covered in blooms. o.O I removed that one last weekend.

So the other day I was tending to green children when I noticed a few very long suckers on my Yellow Pear tomatos and was very confused. I check them all for suckers regularly and couldn't believe I'd missed them for so long when I realized...these were no ordinary suckers.


These freakazoids were growing from the end of a flower/fruit branch instead of in the joint of a leaf branch and the main stem! O.O?! I was actually a bit dumbfounded for a few minutes while I looked them over closely. Yes, they were suckers, growing more stem with new flower and leaf branches and a growing tip. Some of the new flower branches (like the one I'm holding in the pic) were starting to set fruit. Whoa.

After considering a while I finally nipped the growing tips of 2 of these suckers. I'm allowing the third to continue growing - I just have to see what the it does. I've checked  few forums and articles on this variety of tomato and haven't found any mention of this happening. So have I a true mutant here? That would actually be pretty cool...

4 comments:

  1. I've seen it from time to time on tomatoes, though usually it is just a leaf or two on the end of the flowering stem. Yours is pretty cool looking!

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  2. Could also be something specific to this variety. Are all your yellow pear tomatoes doing this? I think you are doing the right thing pinching them off.

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  3. GS - Thanks!

    Anja - it is happening to both of my yellow pear tomato plants. I went to a gardening meeting about tomatos on Sunday and mentioned this, a couple other people said they'd heard or seen it, but with yet another variety as they hadn't tried this one yet. I saw a fruit cluster with some extra leaves at the tip on one of the host's plants, but she couldn't remember what the variety was. Guess I'm not the only one.

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  4. Could also be something specific to this variety. Are all your yellow pear tomatoes doing this? I think you are doing the right thing pinching them off.

    ReplyDelete

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