IMO I'd rate it about 8 as in very important.

If you don't remove the fruits, or most of them, the plant spends its energy in the sexual cycle of fruit ripening at the expense of vegetative growth of roots and foliage which are necessary when a plant is maturing.

Carolyn

I'd give it a 10. It is one of the prices you have to pay for starting them so early. Sorry.

Dave

(10 being very important)?

...is what you wrote and then I called 8 very important, so I goofed. LOL

If 10 is very important then I say 10 as well. ( smile)

Carolyn

Out of curiosity, what are the most serious implications of diverting energy to the plant's sex drive? Are you saying that it weakens the plant permanently or that it slows growth and delays future production?

I would think that if it is the latter, many people would see it as a fair trade. It doesn't take long before I am overwhelmed with tomatoes once summer arrives, so I'd welcome a strategy for slowing the growth of a few plants.

Out of curiosity, what are the most serious implications of diverting energy to the plant's sex drive? Are you saying that it weakens the plant permanently or that it slows growth and delays future production?...Remember what Burgess Meredith said to the Italian Stallion in Rocky I? He told the in-training Rocky to stay away his girlfriend because sex "weakens the legs." I am not sure if this holds for tomato plants (or for professional human boxers), but it may be a consideration.

Reg

Would you remove the whole fruiting stem or just the fruit itself? I would think that if you didn't remove the stem then it would pop out new tomatoes rather quickly.

Going through the Home Depot garden department today I saw a bunch of tomato plants, about 16" tall, with not only flowers but buckshot size fruit on them. If one were to buy one of these plants would you cut off all of the flowers and fruit before transplanting?

Also, my Marvel Stripe, Chocolate Stripe, Brandywine and Green Zebra (all grown from seed) are about a foot tall and have unopened flower buds on top. Should I pinch these off to help with the roots and foliage growth?

Think of the energy exerted for the plant to have a branch, truss and fruit decaying next to the stem, which is sending out roots in the vacinity, taking up uncomposted matter, albeit for a short time,it would be trying to recover at the wound site , while taking up possible disease at the same time.
Not an ideal situation.
Prune it all back and bury it trench style,..... hope for another blossom set.
What you might just get by burying the entire stem, branches truss and all, may be a dead plant, diseased soil and lots of vounteer plants the next year.

Out of curiosity, what are the most serious implications of diverting energy to the plant's sex drive? Are you saying that it weakens the plant permanently or that it slows growth and delays future production?

*****

Energy that a plant makes is used for both growth of roots and foliage, vegetative reproduction, as well as setting blossoms and fruit maturation.

Tomatoes reproduce sexually, not asexually, ie by vegetative means, so preference goes to maturing those early fruits to form seeds.

That takes energy from the vegetative cycle of new root and foliage formation, which is necessary to form a balanced plant as the plant nears maturity.

I'm not at all saying that the plant will be permanently weakeded, nor am I saying that further prduction will be diminished.

If you take the fruits off before you transplant then yes, there will be a delay beofre new blossoms form and set fruit. The blossom cycle is about every 3 weeks.

Folks here have done the experiment of taking two plants of the same variety and removing any fruits and blossoms from one plant and not doing anything to the other one, the control, and usually but not always, the one where blossoms and fruits are removed before transplating seems to do better at subsequent fruit set and maturation.

But if there's still a question in the minds of those reading here, do the experiment yourselves and see what you find b'c that's the only way you'll find out results you can directly observe.

Carolyn

Sex Drive?

I've think I've heard it all... :)

I'd crush up a couple of Viagra and add it to the soil along with the egg shells.

I think you mean keep the plant in the vegetative mode instead of reproductive mode.

:)

sorry, could not resist.

Tim

Great idea Tim. We already got folks adding egg shells, Tums, aspirin, coffee grounds, sugar, banana peels and who knows what else. So why not add Viagra to the mix too? ;)

Pretty soon there won't be any room left in the hole for the plant. We'll have to get Earl to revamp his "hole prep" thread. ;)

Dave

so a few blossoms on a newly transplanted plant should come off? What if there are only one or two? will that really matter?

LOL Dave,
I thought of adding the kitchen scraps accumulated over winter to each hole, but as mentioned in previous post I would be concerned that uncomposted material could be harmful.
I think of Earls method and am reminded of whole fish heads plopped in the hole.
I wonder how fast decomposition occurs as to be beneficial?

Timmy,
The goal is to lower the sex thing, not raise it. The best idea is to give the plant a cold shower. They have shower settings on em' there fancy new-fangled hose thingys (grin)

Troy

Sex sells. Look how many replies I got just by spicing things up a bit. :)

Thanks, Carolyn. That helps.

For the record, I've never been patient enough to wait for fruit set to plant my seedlings, even if I wanted to. (I do prune low-hanging flowers sometimes.) But I think that this is an interesting topic because by the time spring rolls around I usually feel like I'd rather lose a limb of my own than delay my first taste of home-grown tomato for even a single day.

Burgess Meredith was wrong. Or he was doing it the wrong way. One or the other.

You said you have plants. Plural. How many?

If it were me and I had say 10 plants with fruit already formed I'd prune 8 and plant the other two as is. 80/20%. That way you'll have a few fruit earlier than otherwise and you'd be getting your answer through actual observation that you can compare to the opinions of others.

I have 11. So yes, I think will do that. Some will get defruited and deblossomed an others won't. Of course there are three varieties too, so it will be different for each. Perhaps the fruit can stay on one of each variety and the rest come off. That sounds reasonabe to me.

So wha's this about a 3 week cycle? I don't think mine have stopped making blososms since it began more than a month ago, though to be honest I wasn't checking.

So wha's this about a 3 week cycle? I don't think mine have stopped making blososms since it began more than a month ago, though to be honest I wasn't checking.

****

New blossoms are produced at about a 3 wk time frame but since it's not synchronous you see them as being made all the time.

It's helpful for folks who grow in very high heat areas to know that since they often lose ALL blossoms due to blossom drop b'c the high heat destroys the pollen.

When new blossoms are made and the temps dip and the pollen is viable then they can often get fruit set.

Carolyn

Burgess Meredith was wrong. Or he was doing it the wrong way. One or the other...Probably what "Mick" meant here is that the pursuit of amorous activities distracts from the boxer's training regimen. Thus the statement: "women weaken legs." Analagous here wrt a tomato plant, it may be desireable to have the plant attain a healthy "strength" before it starts developing fruit.

Reg

I always hedge my bets and leave a few plants with fruit and prune the rest. Early fruit is very desirable.
Bob B.

I know this is the tomato forum, but does anyone know if the early blossom removal also applies to other plants? I just planted my eggplants 2 weeks ago and they already have blooms forming. (My tomatoes did too, but I already removed them, based on previous reading.)

Ok, now I'm in a mild panic. Remember how I said I removed the blossoms from my tomatoes already? Well they were determinate plants. Now I've read that I shouldn't have done that for determinate plants, only indeterminate. Is that correct? None of the other posts have mentioned this, including this one. Have I completely messed up? Do I have to start over?

Susan - Eggplant are in the same family so yes, I would remove the blooms just as one does when transplanting flowers or anything else. Let the plant energy go to adapting to transplanting, not to blooms.

But many leave them on so it is your choice.

But please note that removing blooms vs. removing actual fruit, as the OP asked here, is a different issue. ;)

Dave

If the tomatoes have open blossoms when transplanting, and the plants are big, I never remove them. Last year, I had my first Ramapo the same time I had my first Manitoba, an extra early variety, because I left the flower. The plant was in a big 20 oz. solo cup full of roots. And it turned out to be one of my most productive.

However, if there were fruit on them I'd have pinched them off. I've seen the results before. A spindly plant that barely grows, with a couple golf ball sized fruit hanging from it - like a Charlie Brown christmas tree.