Eh, I'm with you. I figure the plants 'know' what they are doing. Plus it is extra work to do all that which I am not about at all :) I think the primary reason to remove fruit is to produce healthier plants that are better off in the long run.

Well said!! Susaneden! Don't know where all this pinch, remove, cut, top, and prune stuff comes from.

I think the primary reason to remove fruit is to produce healthier plants that are better off in the long run.

trev - What is the point of having a healthier plant if you have removed the fruit which was the reason for growing the plant in the first place? ;)

Dave

I never prune my tomatoes. OF course, doing so makes them easier to stake and confine in neat rows for intensive production per square foot, but that's more like a commercial operation. The suckers are also a good backup if the main stem is snapped by wind, etc.

I will remove some fruit from a cluster of tomatoes if there are more than four in a cluster. With more than four per cluster it seems none of them get very large.

If my tomatoes grow into a dense jungle, as they did last year, I will thin out the lower parts to permit air circulation and light penetration. It was really dense in there. I admit they were spaced too closely but, based on previous experience, I was not expecting such luxuriant growth.

However, in general I let nature take its course and allow the plants to do what they will.

Jim

I agree to a point -- I don't remove fruit and I think I get more usable food from 3 medium-sized melons than 2 large ones. But I find that tomatoes do better for me if they're pruned to 2-3 stems and staked.

One stem isn't enough because there aren't enough leaves to protect the tomatoes from sunburn. More than 3 stems doesn't allow enough airflow to prevent rot in hot, humid weather. :-)

not talking about pruming toms :D

That's a personal thing--mainly talking about removing fruit.

Im also with you. I let thing do what they are going to do anyways. If the plant cant hold fruit on it, it will abort it. Why risk losing somethign the plant may have developed fine!!!

In MN its so we can get a usable fruit before frost
it doesn't do any good to have 10 pumpkins on the vine if they are not edible same with tomatoes if they are allowed to do there own thing like I let them sometimes I end up with a 5 gallon pail of green tomatoes on each plant and 2 or three red ones

As usual its your garden do as you please that is really the best part about gardening to me I ignore peoples advise all day(:

This year I planted 16 varieties of peppers, both sweet and hot. There are at least 2 plants of each. They have been in the ground or in pots since mid March when we had an early warm-up.

Most of the plants flowered while still very small. At that point I decided to allow one of each variety go ahead and do it's thing, and then pinched the buds off all the rest, just once.

In virtually every instance, the 'early bird' plants stayed small and only produced a couple or three peppers - so far. Almost all the other plants are bigger, in some cases much bigger and have many more peppers, though they are taking a month longer to ripen. A few show no difference in production or plant size.

But you know what? I'm happy! I got the early ones "outta my system", and now have the masses to do with as I please until next year. The best of both worlds!

PS For the first time California Wonder Bell peppers are producing the biggest, most beautiful bell peppers I've ever grown. I almost didn't even try them but they always show up first in the nurseries around here and I couldn't resist. I might even have to grow them from seed next year! :)

Many things are best..."doing their own thing"......therefore [mistake].
Some things are better controled in the number of fruits. Peaches are a prime example. Watermelons can be too. For the larger watermelon varieties I have a general rule of thumb...1 fruit - excellent taste, flavor, and texture.
2 fruits - good taste, flavor, and texture.
3 fruits and more - fair to poor taste, flavor, and texture. Sure there are some rare exceptions and that is why it is a general rule of thumb for me. I would rather have 2 great melons than 7 poor ones!

"trev - What is the point of having a healthier plant if you have removed the fruit which was the reason for growing the plant in the first place?"

I know people can get carried away thinning stuff, but there are times when you need to. Like when you're initially transplanting plants and they've got fruit. If you want them to get established faster and produce more in the long run, then you need to remove those initial fruits. It's like not letting a 12 year old girl have children. Can she carry an infant to term? Most can. Is 12 a good age to have kids? No. Good dog breeders won't breed their dogs until they've reached mature size even though they're breeding dogs for puppies.

...why would you mess with mother nature...?

Not to be too much of a hairsplitter, but agriculture is, by definition, "messing with mother nature." ;-)

The plants we grow were not created by Mother Nature. They are ugly, deformed monsters unable to survive in the wild without our support. If I don't thin my pear trees, all I am going to get is a giant fruit drop sometime between July and August, with attendant visits by hordes of deer, and maybe 20 pounds of pears in september. With thinning, I easily get 300 lbs.

We are talking about plants that, sometimes, break under the weight of their own fruit. They will be gone the moment we will be gone. Remember, the original tomatoes were the size of a grape.

I need to thin winter squashes, and remove all of the late setting fruits from my vines to ensure the the older fruits ripen before the season is over. Sometimes I thin my early tomato clusters hoping to get ripe tomatoes earlier. If I don't thin my apple trees I'll get no apples next year. If I don't thin my peach trees, that would be a disaster. If I didn't thin my plum trees, the branches would break, the fruit may never ripen, and the quality of the fruit would be miserable.

It depends on what it is. I have raspberries that produce like crazy. Sometimes they start to grow small berries and I pick them off becuase they are really to small to eat. What's the point in the plant using energy on fruit that is inedible? I don't do this with everything, but sometimes it's necessary.