Important OT : Tomato plant early blooms

[thatsbaseball]

Do y'all pinch em off ?

 

[Shmuley]

Nope. But I do pinch the suckers.

 

[msu86]

I raise about 50 tomato plants a year...I love preserving food, I was raised farming and even though I live in Gluckstadt, MS I still have my garden to munch on in the Summer. I have never pinched off blooms. I pinch off suckers if I catch them when they are very small. If I miss one and it gets as big around as my pinky I just leave it. You open your plant up for disease if you do it too late. BTW, if you have not raised Cherokee Purple go get you a plant and let me know how you love them when you make the 1st sandwich from them.

 

[mstateglfr]

BTW, if you have not raised Cherokee Purple go get you a plant and let me know how you love them when you make the 1st sandwich from them.

Truth. We found some thru SeedSavers about 8 years ago and they quickly became a staple for our gardens. Due to structure and taste, they are incredible slicing tomatoes for sandwiches and salads.

 

[aTotal360]

I'm gonna go eat dinner at the IHOP at 4:30pm and reread this thread.

 

[MadDawg.sixpack]

I've been growing tomatoes for over 20 years and I've never pinched off a bloom. Now suckers are another story and honestly the results are mixed. Basically if you take off suckers you will get fewer tomatoes but they will be bigger. Leave the suckers and get more tomatoes, but smaller.

 

[The Peeper]

I've got 13 plants so far. 3 of them had maters on them when I got them so I left them. The other 10 plants didn't have blooms or maters and started blooming about a week ago and are MUCH bigger than the 3 w/ maters on them, double the height I'd day. Draw your own conclusions but based on this year I'll pluck the lower blooms from now on

 

[RedStickDawg]

I’ve always heard to pinch the blooms for the first 4-5 weeks after planting so the plant can focus its energy on growing/establishing a good root system instead of using the energy on producing fruit. After those 4-5 weeks and it looks strong and healthy, let the blooms grow. It’s always worked for me and my tomatoes are great every year.

 

[Hot Rock]

I have a few raised beds and bought an automatic watering system for $20 from Amazon. Don't do it. Go ahead and get better connectors if you are going to go that route. These cheap things blowout too easily.

I may go back and glue the connectors with some gorilla glue. That might do the trick if I don't put too much glue and stop up the hose.

I have 6 tomato plants, 4 cucumbers, a 2 x 3 ft section of potatoes, 3 types of peppers, Okra, Onions, Garlic, several herbs such as basil, Rosemary, Cilantro and mint. My wife added a few flowers mixed in to attract bees. I also have a couple cold frames we grew some greens, lettuce and green onions over the winter. I built those out of old windows. My wife uses them to harden off the flowers that she started from seed.

One cold frame has a back that opens on hinges opened by a vent opener as it gets too hot. I am just starting to do this again after 44 years of not having a garden. The pandemic made us start it up, that and get a cat. We enjoyed the fresh veggies but cat has been entertaining as heck. My wife has almost completely eliminated purchasing flowers every year. She saves the seeds and grows them under florescent lights over the winter. I put a timer on those and built some racks for them.

I don't grow beans, peas or corn. We purchase those from local growers as needed every year. This is just a hobby for me but we supplement our diets with it. I grew up on fresh veggies and wild game and I miss it.

 

[blacklistedbully]

You can use pinched suckers to start more tomato plants. Every year I end up with way more plants from the suckers than plants I bought. Stick 'em in some water and gradually increase the sunshine they get. When you see a good root structure, transfer them to soil.

 

[She Mate Me]

I've grown many maters in my life. I prune carefully, and often throughout the season to keep the plants open and logical in their growth habit.

That said, I never clip blooms and I keep as many flowering stems (suckers) as I can, because that's where more tomatoes come from. I'll let the plant decide what blooms become tomatoes. I grow in sturdy cages so I can let quite a few stems develop.

A tomato plant can support a large number of flowering stems and still produce full size fruit for the variety, but it has to have the water and fertilizer necessary to get that job done. The mistake I see most is people get tired of the garden in the heat of the summer and dont keep up with the watering and feeding at the time it will produce the most results. Ive been guilty of it.