Roxanne said:

My container grown tomato plants were beautiful, when they needed
staked we were chopping down an apple tree, so I used some of the long
straight branches for stakes. Now my plants look terrible, I think
they're almost dead. Does it have anything to do with the apple
branches?

I don't *think* it has to do with the apple branches vs. some other type of
stake. It may have something to do with pushing a stake into a container
already full of roots, trying to tie up plants that were happily sprawling around.

Or it could just be coincidence, and a disease has hit your tomato plants that
would have happened, apple stakes or not.

(Container-grown plants may need watering more than once a day. Can that be a
factor?)

I put the stake in the same time I put in the tomato plant, and train them to
the stake from then on.
--
Pat in Plymouth MI

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(attributed to Don Marti)