A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum The Tomato Forum Clones better Than donor?

This year I planted a Red Beefsteak a couple weeks after mothers day and in about a month it was taking off pretty good but then it seemed to be dying. Before it got any worse, I cut off a couple branches and stuck them in the ground and kept them well watered. Well, in a few weeks they started to grow and now I am getting some tomatoes off of both of them. As for the donor plant, it's still alive but just sickly looking. It did get one tomato on it but it never got bigger than a golf ball. Comparing the donor plant and the two clones, the donor plant did grow to about 4' tall while the clones have about stopped growing at 30" or so. Here's a few pics of the clones and the donor. My question is why did the clones grow and produce more than the donor, they all had the same dirt, fertilizer, water and sun?

One never knows, it could have been root damage to the main plant.