Let me give the short story first. I have a couple tomato cuttings in
a mason jar of tap water. I fertilized two days later with a weak KNO3
and (NH4)2SO4. They began producing roots. After about three weeks,
the roots were several inches long. Then I changed the water to one
with a weak wash from Vigoro's Citrus & Avocado food. Within a few
days, there was substantial root dieback plus dead spots on the all but
the youngest leaves. I rinsed the stems and put them back in plain tap
water. Now, two days later, the dieback seems to have stopped. Anyone
have experience getting sucker's such as these going again? I'd really
like to get them rooted then finally transplant to soil. Keeping this
line going is also an objective.

The details are as follows: In March I took a couple cuttings, top 3
to 6 inches of suckers from a tomato plant that had been very
productive in August thru early October. The plant had over wintered
outside (tomatos are grown commerically in "choice parts" of southern
Calif. year around). My tomato patch is not one of the "choice parts."
We are located on the North side of a hill. In April thru October it's
OK. By November, my tomato plants start getting mildewed, blossoms fall
off, if they haven't open they hang with no visible development. Fruit
that hasn't ripened by mid-November also stops developing. So usually
I turn off the water and pull my plants about mid November. This year,
altho I stopped wateromg as usual, I was busy with other things and
left one plant in the ground thru February - the only water it got was
rain. But we had a very wet year here, I suppose the rain kept these
shoots alive since the base of the plant was not much more than a husk.

I cut the surviving shoots (two, 1 six inches, the other about 2.5
inches), put them in a quart jar (foil wrapped) of tap water. They sat
there for about 2 weeks without wilting but also without rooting. Then
I added a several onion seed sized crystals of pottassium nitrate and
one ammonium sulfate crystal the size of a radish seed. A few days
later I finally had some roots and the foloiage had greened up a bit.
That was the good news.

Then I went shopping for Chelated micros with no results. After finding
my best source closed (a stall at the Carlsbad Flower Exchange), I
visited several of the retail garden centers. Finally, at the local
Armstrongs Nsy, I saw some fertilizer advertised as "complete with
minors" at a relatively decent price, 12$ for 40 lbs (18 kilos). It
was a Vigoro product labeled "for citrus and avocados." What really
caught my eye were the "complete with minors": Magnesium 1.5%, Sulfur
9.2%, Boron 0.02%, water soluble copper 0.01%, water soluble iron
0.001%, water soluble manganese 0.01%, molybdenum 0.0005%, water
soluble zinc 0.01%. (The majors we 6.5 % N from some ammonium salt,
3.5 % N from a slow release coated urea, available p2o5 4%, soluble
k2o 10%.)

I had the idea that a pinch of this might be just what these cuttings
needed (the other 9.99.. lbs hopefully will be good for our Nectarine
and Peach trees). I took roughly 0.1 grams of it, dumped it into a cup
of water and tested by taking a tsp (20ml?) and adding it to the mason
jar with the cuttings. Bad idea! The next time I looked in, several
days later, the root tips were dieing and there are lots of dead or
dying spots in the leaves, especially the older leaves. I immediately
changed the solution back to tap water. Today, two days later, they
are still living. One of the cuttings, the smaller one, had about 80%
dieback of the roots, stumps about 1 mm to 1.5 mm remain but there also
appears to be a new bump of new root starting to grow. The roots of
the other cutting are much better, many filamentous roots an inch or
two long still remain.

Any ideas on what I should do next? This Vigoro product is not
homogeneous. Also, doesn't the water soluble Copper looks high
relative to the other micros? Thank you very much - Bob in Calif.