I wouldn't here. If it gets as hot as early as Dawn says it does, you'll need some fruit to set early. That's my opinion, at least.

Bre,

Leave the blooms on. They will not hurt tomatoes growing, and if we have a early hot summer they could be some of the only tomatoes you get depending upon the variety.

I have picked early pepper blooms off before to keep the fruit from slowing down the peppers growth. I seem to remember it being recommended for peppers if the plants are still small. But for tomatoes, with the weather we are having right now (plenty warm), then I would not pick tomato blooms off. The plants should be growing aggressively right now. You should concentrate on making sure they have the water they need when they need it, and enough nutrients available to them.

That's my two cents worth, based on my experience.

I wouldn't. Your plants have been in the ground a month, or at least a couple of weeks. I might do it on a plant that wasn't in the ground yet, but never a plant that was already planted out. I want all the tomatoes I can get before it gets too hot.

Leslie

Thanks everyone! Well then I will let them turn into tomatoes! Woohoo!

Maybe I did read that on a pepper post? Who knows..I have read so much trying to learn its all mushing together!

Bre,

Like the others here, I never pinch off tomato blossoms. Once your daytime highs start regularly hitting about 92-95 degrees and your nighttime lows start regularly exceeding roughly 72-75 degrees, fruit set on tomatoes (and some other veggies) is impeded by the heat. So, the earlier you can get fruit to set, the more fruit you'll likely get.

In an average year, the temperatures that impede fruit set might not arrive until the end of June.

There's been at least three years I can remember (2002- 2004 and 2007) when the temperatures stayed cool enough often enough that the plants set fruit all summer long, but that is fairly rare. In 2011, the types of temperatures that impeded fruit set arrived at our house in southern OK in mid-May. So, even though pinching blossoms is recommended by some people in climates milder than ours, it is a risky practice for us because we often get too hot far too early.

This morning I counted 9 tomatoes--one of them full-sized and breaking color and another one not far behind--on a Bush Early Girl tomato plant that was one of the first tomato plants I put in the ground back in March. The Bush Early Girl, if allowed to bloom and set fruit while young, will have more fruit than foliage by the end of May. If I had chose to pinch off the early blossoms, I'd have bigger plants by the end of May, but I wouldn't have ripe fruit. The choice is yours, but I wouldn't pinch off the blossoms.

And, because every gardening "rule" is made to be broken, there have been some intensely hot and intensely dry summer months when some tomato plants in our garden have set fruit in August when the highs were in the 108-115 degree range and the lows were in the upper 70s through the mid-80s. Why did this happen? Because the relative humidity was incredibly low---often hitting the single digits through the mid-teens at its lowest point each day. So, it isn't only the temperatures that play a role-- relative humidity values are a part of the process too.

In some parts of the country, people do pinch off blossoms to direct all the plants' early energy to foliage. Later, after they stop pinching off blossoms, their plants will set fruit all summer long because they rarely have the kind of heat we have here.

When we lived in Fort Worth, we had a neighbor who pinched off each and every tomato blossom all summer long and then wondered why her plants never produced tomatoes.

Reed, We already have hit the mid-90s at our house 5 times this year, including twice (95 degrees and 93 degrees) this week. Luckily the nights still have been cool. The hot days are a reminder to me that summer is coming and my tomato plants need to set fruit while they have the chance!

Dawn

I was really hoping with the wetter spring we have had, and the roller coaster of temps we started with that we might actually get a good dose of 70's for highs and not jump right into summer. Doesn't look like it though. And I want tomatoes, not plants, so I will keep letting them go about their business. I guess at the end of the day the plants know better then I do as to what they are doing!

I looked at an Early Girl, and wish now I would have planted one. It not like we didn't have to cover the ones we did plants a few times anyways.

Cracks me up about your neighbor! Did you ever tell her why?

If I were going to plant tomatoes in a heated greenhouse again--which I'm not, due to expense--I would only plant Bush Early Girl. Of the six varieties I put in there from a sowing last fall, only the Chadwick's Cherry and Bush Early Girl produced much. But the Chadwick's Cherry only produced cherries, and small ones at that, on a plant that got 8 feet tall. The BEG produced medium size tomatoes starting in January on a 2 ft bush and a lot of them. It is now outside in it's 18 gal pot and still blooming like mad. We have eaten from it nonstop since January.

Of the others, the Bush Goliath and Fourth of July never produced inside but are setting on now outside. One called Park's Container is now producing a little, but the flavor isn't nearly as good as B.E.G. I think the last one was called World's Earliest but it succumbed to a cold night that nipped but didn't kill the others back in Jan. I have raised Early Girl for years, but this year was the first for Bush Early Girl.

Next year I will go back to heating the sunporch and may plant a couple 5 gallon pots with B.E.G. started in Nov to put in the greenhouse in a big pot in March to be moved outside after frost.

Bre, She was not a pleasant person---didn't make eye contact, didn't speak to anyone, always had a scowl on her face. I felt sorry for her. I believe she had a pretty unpleasant childhood and seemed miserable all the time. Would you voluntarily tell someone fitting that description that they were doing everything "wrong"? No, I did not. Her husband came over to the house one day and asked me why they weren't getting tomatoes, so I carefully explained to him (he was a very nice man) everything she was doing wrong. (Growing them in almost total shade, and she pinched off EVERY branch and limb, so that her tomato plants, which were tied to 6' tall wooden stakes, essentially looked like miniature palm trees with long skinny trunks and a cluster of 4 to 6 leaves at the top.) After I explained everything to him, he hesitated and then said something like "Uhm, I think I'll just forget I came over here and we had this conversation. I really don't want to have to tell her all this....". He knew she wasn't going to handle the news well and might 'kill the messenger', so to speak. I solemnly agreed with him "I think maybe that would be best", and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to grin or giggle. Had she been an approachable person to whom you could speak, I would have told her early in spring that she was getting her info on how-to-grow-tomatoes from a source not written for north central Texas. We bought this place and moved here not long after that, and I have no idea if she ever tried growing tomatoes again.

Dorothy, The first time I grew Bush Early Girl, I put it in the garden very small and it had flowers, so I left them there. I bet that little plant produced 28 or 30 tomatoes that were ready to pick in late May and early June. After it had recovered a little from that craziness, it then bore the rest of the summer. You know, for years Early Girl was not early for me at all (though last year it was), but it always is Late Girl here, continuing to set fruit even in August when everything else slows down. Bush Early Girl is reliably early and produces just as late in the year as Early Girl. I don't think there is a plant around that beats the two of them for reliability, although Better Bush is pretty good too.

I might grow a couple of plants on the sunporch for winter, but won't even try to drag containers of existing plants into the greenhouse in the fall to keep them going. I had trouble with that last year. The plants did fine, but in order to keep them happy, I would leave the greenhouse closed up during the day for the most part so heat could build up....and the heat kept the tomatoes happy. However, the lettuce I had growing in tubs certainly did not appreciate the heat and it made some of them bolt. Having to choose, I think I'd rather keep the greenhouse open and cooler in autumn/winter for the lettuce, and just keep a couple of tomato plants producing in containers on the sunporch. I just don't think I can keep the tomato plants as warm and happy inside the greenhouse as they'd like while simultaneously keeping the lettuce cool and comfortable.

I always say that BEG is the only tomato plant I've ever grown that literally has more fruit than flowers, but I just thought of another one, although it is a Roma. Martino's Roma will produce more fruit than leaves, and I like the fruit fine, but the fruit on Martino's Roma seems more prone to sunscald than the fruit on BEG. For whatever reason, even though they are not well-shaded by foliage, the fruit on BEG rarely sunscald. Maybe it is because they are growing earlier in the season in cooler temperatures and less intense sun. By the time they are covered by fruit in intense heat and sunlight, adjacent taller plants may be shading their fruit enough to keep them from sunscalding.

Dawn

We managed to have both tomatoes and lettuce by sectioning off a small room in the greenhouse to heat just for the tomatoes and houseplants, but even with two small electric heaters it got too cold a couple nights. The lettuce in the bigger room benefited from a bit of spill-over heat on those coldest nights, but they didn't really need it at the temps we've had the last two winters. But my poor houseplants got too much light and heat down there and sunburned a bit, and it cost way too much to heat just the small room so it's back to heating the sunporch as I've done for over 20 years.

Don't know why Early Girl isn't early for you. It always has been for me. And this year the one I bought in late March and put out 3 weeks later has the biggest tomato and will be the earliest. And some of my own plants were started in January. Oh well, everything is an experiment.

Dawn, after doing a bit of research on Roma tomatoes, and after growing San Martino Redorta, they have "wispier" foliage and the foliage is droopy, making the plants appear to be gasping for water when, in fact, they are not. I've really had to exercise restraint in my desire to water this tomato more frequently than necessary. Anyway, I can see why Romas might be more vulnerable to sunscald than the non-pastes. Probably the hearts, too, which except for their shape seem essentially paste types, too.

Susan

Dawn- NO, I would not tell someone fitting that description they were doing anything wrong. Too funny and yet sad about her husband. It sounds like he was use to getting the brunt.

Ya'll are really making me kick myself for not planting an Early Girl! Now I know what I need to get next year! Do you grow yours from transplant, or seeds? My husband really wants one of the yellow cherry tomatoes. My step-dad had one last year and Josh(my hubby) said it was some of the best cherry tomatoes he has ever had. So that's on my list too.

Momofsteel, Early Girls are still available. It's not too late. They may not be extra early, but in a summer like the last two, EGs are reliable in late summer. In 2011 we got 8 inches of rain in August and I picked EGs until it frosted in Oct, when the frost shut the plant down, with 50 green tomatos on it. I picked those tomatos and the ones that were the least damaged ripened in the house. The others became fried green tomatos. A few years ago, my Dad decided he was too old to garden, but in early June when he saw tomato plants for $.50 apiece, he bought 6 lanky, rootbound plants, planted them deep, nursed them through the summer and had lots of tomatoes in September when my early planted ones were giving it up. So if you can find a spot and can find a plant, tuck one in somewhere.

Mulberry- I think I will. My broc. just bolted so I have an open spot that I want to fill. Granted its not the north side of the garden, which I heard is the best for your taller plants, but I think it will do fine.

Bre, In our intense sunlight and intense summer heat, it doesn't matter if you plant tomatoes on the south side of the garden. Whatever is sitting to their north and gets a little shade from them will be eternally grateful to you! Some years I plant all my peppers on the north side of tomato plants so they benefit from the shade of the taller tomato plants, and the pepper plants love it.

Dawn