How many tomatoes should I leave on each of these plants?

16 years ago

Live in zone 5 (just north of Toronto). Plants doing well, I have trained most plants to have 2 to 4 stems. Using missouri method on other suckers. Last year I tried 1 stem per plant, with some success, but not what I had hoped (horribly hot weather last summer did not help)...however the tomatoes that I did get last year were often quite large and delicious. I want to get large and delicious fruits again this year, want fruits to be as plentiful as possible and to mature throughout the growing season, but want all to be big (not going for any record tomatoes, just want as many as possible to get to full size).

Plants are as follows, does anyone have suggestions on how many tomatoes I should leave on each fruiting branch, how many fruiting branches I should leave on each plant, etc.?

1 Black

1 Black Cherry

1 Black From Tula

1 Homer Fikes Oxheart

1 Paul Robeson

1 Strawberry

1 SunSugar FT Hybrid

1 Yellow Pear

2 Aunt Gerties Gold

2 Aunt Ginny's Purple

2 Carbon

2 Cherokee Chocolate

2 Cherokee Purple

2 Clint's Rowdy Red

2 Dr. Wyche's Yellow

2 Earl's Faux

2 Emerald Evergreen

2 Green Giant

2 large unidentified cherry-type

2 Stump of the World

3 Brandywine Sudduth's Strain

3 delicious sweet heavy producing but unidentified red

4 Black Krim

Thanks!!!

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Comments (6)

korney19
16 years ago
Anthony, I would let the plant decide for you. Sometimes flowers will abort too. If you want maximum harvest, over the entire season, I wouldn't thin clusters. They will bear what they can hold.

Looks like you have indeterminates, at least the ones I recognize, and you should have clusters forming all season. If you want bigger fruits, maybe remove one per cluster or just water & feed more to increase size. If you want really big ones, remove fruits leaving 1 per cluster. If you're going for monsters, grow just 1 or 2 fruits per plant.

Hope this helps.

Mark
digdirt2
16 years ago
I would agree to let nature take it's course. You can easily decrease your volume of production by removing blossoms or young fruit but you can only affect fruit size to a small degree. Most of it is already genetically determined. Kind of like raising a puppy. ;)

Dave
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anthony_toronto
Original Author
16 years ago
Hmmm...both of those opinions are at odds with what I have found in the past. HOWEVER, in the past, I either let all plants do their thing (with a small amount of fiddling), or did the 1-stem thing with more fiddling on all plants last year (and did get fewer and considerably larger fruits)...so, the effects that I saw may have been caused by weather conditions, etc.

For my multiple plants, I will experiment...will pluck fruits from some, leave all fruits on others, see what happens, and report back in a few months.

Would still like to hear other opinions if anyone else has any thoughts!
sunsi
16 years ago
In my short growing season I've come to the conclusion that picking off buds/fruits is not very sensible therefore this year I'm letting nature take it's course as Dave suggested.
anthony_toronto
Original Author
16 years ago
I can't disagree about our short growing season...Toronto a little worse that NY, but my first toms (some sunsugar) are ripening already, most of my large/beefsteak varieties have 15-30 tomatoes already (with plenty more flowers looking like they are pollenated), and 3 more months in the growing season, so I am going to try to experiment with at least 1 of every (multiple) plant. Whatever happens, I will have learned something by the end of the season.
timmy1
16 years ago
They should look like this...

How many tomatoes should I leave on each of these plants?

Comments (6)

korney19

digdirt2

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How many tomatoes should I leave on each of these plants?

Comments (6)

korney19

digdirt2

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