I don't know whether this is what you are shooting for but as I see it: manipulation during different stages, traditionally named for convenience as conception, differentiation, and development. You describe cutting short the differentiation stage and forcing development. Ontogeny recapitulates and/or structures phylogeny with a little help from pruning.

Correct me if I am wrong but I think genetic manipulation has proven much, much more effective in expression of traits than has the nip, tuck, and pinch. Mendelian genetic expression is a better contributor towards vigor, productivity, and the like; the nip-and-tuck sculpturing of a plant can affect its fruit quality, but by necessity is detrimental to its fruit quantity, at least in terms of its overall life-long productivity and potential.

Which brings us to young trees/fruit to older trees/fruit. The awful truth is that these things take time, sometimes a great deal of time. I have a orchard in the back of my house that is rather spotty. There are only about 10 pear trees in it. But, they are each over 75 years old. They bear more fruit that I can deal with. I would recommend just waiting for the fruit trees. You can't force it too much, you know.

As to whether the above manipulation works for tomato plants, well, I haven't seen any proof one way or the other. There are just too many variables to be entirely certain....

Or, maybe I am wrong.....

Spade,

You sound like you have a scientific background, so I doubt that you are wrong.

Strangepeeps:

PEPPERS/TOMATOES: There are anecotal reports from folks indicating that they believe clipping off the cotyledons when repotting tomato plants into a deeper pot stimulates growth. The anecdotal reports also indicate that, if you repot your seedlings from one container to another and if you clip off some of the true leaves at that time AND plant deep, you'll get great root growth and topgrowth as well. The question is, does it work?

One method of doing this [deeper repotting combined with pinching off leaves (some, not all leaves)] was described in Jeff Cox's wonderful book "Jeff Cox's 100 Greatest Garden Ideas" and is idea #85 "Plant Deep To Reap a Heap of Tomatoes". I tried it for several years and did get very healthy, very vigorous transplants. However, I couldn't tell that I got either earlier tomatoes or larger harvests overall, so I stopped doing it. Both last year and this year I started seeds in peat pellets, pricked them out and potted them up to styrofoam cups once, and they are about ready to do into the ground. The plants look just as good, though slightly smaller, than when I followed Jeff Cox's plan of potting up three times to successively larger containers.

I haven't done it with anything other than tomatoes.

FRUIT TREES: Like Spade, I don't think picking blossoms off fruit trees is beneficial. My fruit trees always set way more fruit than they can successfully carry to maturity so I have to thin them out once the flowers have fallen and the fruit are small but visable. If you are removing blossoms before you get fruit set, you may inadvertently remove too many flowers that would set fruit and leave too many that weren't pollinated and didn't set fruit.

In general, I'm not crazy about attempting to manipulate plants, especially trees. Just let them grow at a natural rate and don't overfeed or overwater and they will grow and develop and perform as Mother Nature intended.

MYCORRHIZAL FUNGI: I am too tired to think and talk about this one tonight, but I think maybe Randy is doing something with it. I'll try to remember it and post it tomorrow if I can find the old thread. Do I think it probably works? Yes. Have I tried it? No.

Dawn

Hello Spade, I appreaciate your reply, Im just trying to modify to growth stages alittle in an effort to get a healthy plant to grow faster and healthier than it would by itself in the wild. Im Just expermenting with my plants that I have and It seems to be working. Im not interested in genetic modifications or anything of that sort, all my seeds are from heirloom sources, im just wanting speed up the growth process if possible. Now Im only talking about vegatables, I haven't tried with any trees yet, but there may be certain trees that see benefit from trimming. I think that when a plant is ready to grow larger it stops giving certain old growth leaves nutrients and moisture to eventually kill off the limb so that it can grow larger leafs, but when I pluck off certain leafs there is still moisture in the leaf, but the leaf is looking dull and not growing, so I think that if you clip them less energy will be wasted on the slowly decaying old growth. therefore allowing for a faster developement of new growth.

Thank Dawn your right about leaving the flowers until I see fruit then thin them out. Oh and about the tomato blossoms I read it is not good to clip blossoms off of determinate types to incourage root growth, as determinates only produce a certain numbered amount of blossoms. Indeterminate are the only types that one would clip the blossoms off of as these types keep producing fruit and blossoms until they are killed. I have read somewhere that some tomatoes are biennials, and can live for 2 years, is this true?