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Re: Tomato plants for sale

Posted by Rick (Lyle's Dad) on December 2, 2012, 8:14 pm, in reply to "Re: Tomato plants for sale"
198.144.116.233

Sparks,

Don't know for sure, but it could be a couple of things.

#1. Did you fertilize the plants? If so, did you happen to use a high Nitrogen fertilizer? Or perhaps the soil was high in manure, perhaps chicken. Sure, tomatoes need N, but too much makes a lot of leaves and shoots and not a lot of fruit.

#2. Pinching/Pruning. Cherry tomatoes are generally indeterminate (VS determinate). Meaning, they will continue to bear fruit as long as they grow. This is a long winded answer. For indeterminate tomatoes, it is wise to prune to force the fruit. The main plant has, at the start, a main, thick stalk. That's the prime daddy stalk. When the very first flower appears, you can go down the main stalk to the first 'sucker'. The 'sucker' is the item that juts off the main stalk at a leaf arm and it is generally at a 45 degree angle from the crook of the stalk/leaf stem. The first one down from the first flower is the 'pick of the litter' sucker or the plant's way of making a second main trunk/stalk. For indeterminate plants, I leave this 'pick of the litter' sucker to be my 2nd main stalk. Then, I pinch/prune/pluck every dang sucker on the plant from there on out. All of them. If you leave these suckers, they will all become copy cats of the main stalk. You could easily have 20 of them. So, the energy of the plant is just going and going and going all toward making these new stalks/trunks. It isn't worried about fruit (yet). When the time comes for the plant to do its fruit deal, it might just pop out 2 or 3 or 7 fruits b/c that is enough seeds to propogate. Tomatoe plants don't know we want to eat the fruit. So, I suspect that you may have not pinched/pruned/plucked these suckers. Don't worry, you can still do it. I'd start at the lower part of the plant and find that first sucker and you can tell it is the 'pick of the litter' b/c it is much thicker. Let it be. Now as you go up, pinch all the other suckers that might be 10" long or longer at this point. They could even have other suckers off of them. Get it back to a main trunk and a secondary trunk and this will send the signal to the plant to get busy getting the fruit.

That is what I think. Good luck.

Rick
100


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