Saw this early girl and couldn’t leave her – was a big tangled mess and all lower leaves were yellowing and dried out. Once I got her home and pruned away the mess, turns out there are three plants in here. I am planning to put this in my raised bed. Do I need to separate the three (and how would I do that) or will it be okay like this?
by Emmie_dee_101
17 Comments
It’s a tomato, so you could throw it at a wall to get it to pop out of the container, drop kick the rootball, elbow drop them to separate them, run them over with your car for good measure and then replant.
If there’s lots of room in the raised bed, just leave them as is. They may need more water but they should be fine.
Tomatoes take rough transplants pretty well in my opinion. They will all 3 die in that pot if you leave it so I say transplant and separate. Do it at the coolest temp you can and shade them for a few days if you can. Give a very deep water as soon as you transplant and then daily for a few days.
The roots are probably tangled. If you do separate them if plant them deep and keep them wet so they’ll grow new roots along the stem in case they get damaged when pulling them apart
The other option would be cut the two weaker ones.
The Early Girls have been bickering for weeks being cramped in close quarters. They are dying for solo careers. Split up the group and let them live their best lives!! They’ll be fine!!
Re-pot into something bigger and drench that thing!
Look spread out enough that you could separate their roots easily enough and plant them spaced out in your raised bed! I find pulling the entire dirt ball and blasting it with a hose to expose/loosen the roots works well.
Soak the container really well and let it sit for an hour to drain, then pop the whole rootball out with the soil and gently separate the roots. 🙂 make sure to water really well immediately after transplanting and maybe give them some shade with a cloth for a few days if it’s super sunny
Take off the pot and use a hose to rinse off the soil from the roots. They’ll come apart easy then. Even if they don’t, they’ll be fine if you just pull them apart
The 3 plants wont do well together.
I’d cut 2 off at the very bottom and stick the stems into 2 different additional pots. The stems will grow roots. You’ll get three plants!!!!
Tomatoes are one of the most resilient plants you can grow. They’ll wilt and then rebound with 50 blooms and fruit for you next month.
They just need their own space to grow.
I’d love to know, from someone that’s truly an expert, if it’s possible to do some kind of unique graft here, and have 3 rootstocks going to 1 plant… as in, cut two of the tops off, on a diagonal, maybe something like 5 to 8 inches up, and then graft both of those rootstocks into the other remaining tomato plant, making somewhat of a “tripod tomato” plant.
Has anyone ever tried something like this? I wanna see some YouTuber do some mad scientist shit with things like this 😀
Deal with bound root, transplant, water. Wait a bit then give them some coffee grinds.
Repot or transplant the whole rootball DEEP, and bury a few inches of the stems and then more new roots will grow out of them and it will get big and healthy because it can absorb water and nutrients better with more roots. And keep those suckers to a minimum unless you want a sprawling tangled mess.
It will be fine. Nice work!
I often have 3 plants in one pot.
Divide and repot and bury up to the first leaves