Nat Gardner, I think Softmentor means simply that some trees will hold their fruit for a number of months after it is ripened before it will naturally fall off. For example, a juice orange might have set fruit on blossoms that opened in March of 2007, and those fruit might have ripened in December of 2007, and yet they might very well linger on the tree into May of 2008 if you don't pick them. Despite this, the tree will still flower again in March of 2008, give or take a couple or three weeks, depending on the seasonal conditions. Others will correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think you are really stressing the tree that much if you leave part of the previous year's crop on the tree after it starts to flower and set new fruit. The old fruit, already ripe, are probably not drawing that much out of the tree as far as nutrients are concerned. Of course, eventually the old season's fruit will either fall off, or you will pick it and notice it is past its peak. One thing to remember is that ripe fruit on the tree will possibly raise the risks of insect pests and disease, since things like fruit flies will find the ripe fruit, and fungal diseases will potentially also show up. Don

great topic! this year i had a mislabeling mishap with my seeds. long story short to figure out whick was which (i knew which plants were the same because they were side by side) i had several pairs of plants. i would let one of the plants flower and pluck the others flowers. did this across the board with them all. anyway the ones i let fruit i only let a few pods set (2-6) and picked the rest. what i saw after plucking flowers about 3 times. the plucked plants were much bigger and brachier. the unplucked plants seemsed to stall in comparison. not much growth after the pods set. imo it takes time to pluck flowers and more time each time you do it. i simply refused to pluck my lemon drop after the 2nd time. to friggin many to pluck. i also did this with 2 savina cuttings and the difference there was crazy. i will add with the savinas the plucked got lots of nitrogen as well. i dont know about tomatoes but with peppers it will give you bigger yeilds from what i have seen. Michael

Then your zone is similar to mine (zone 5 Wisconsin) although things might occur a tad earlier for you than me. I have a few flowers on some tomatos already. In the past I have had flowers on before putting in the ground. Didn't conduct any extensive, scientific yield comparisons, but I didn't remove any flowers and they all seemed to yield as expected.

Carolyn, I nip the so-called suckers much early on. It is true that there is a colaboration between the foliage and the root system. But Until a SUCKER reaches to a state of flowering the plant will invest a lot of energy to grow it. So when I nip it and direct the energy to the buds and flowers that exist. It make sense to have many branches if : 1) you have a long warm season. 2) i above plus you have a lot of space between plants. But right now, I do not have either (1) or (2). So I think that I am optimizing my resources. I don not want to have a great big lush tomato plant toward the end of season with a ton of green tomatoes on it.