Tomato plants hitting my greenhouse roof.

[Scott Hogg]

Hi folks.

What should I do?

Thanks

[ChrisMath88]

mine too I've just let mine get on with it, doesn't seem to have bothered then yet....


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[cariann88]

You can pinch the top of the tomato plant

[Small pumpkin]

[ATTACH]47212[/ATTACH] mine too I've just let mine get on with it, doesn't seem to have bothered then yet....


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I thought I had triffids! You have got some monsters there, well done

Like Cariann88 said. Pinch out the tops

[Bigmallly]

Yep, let it grow to 5/6 trusses then pinch out the tops.

[Fleurisa]

Train them up the apex to the other side

[Yasai]

Yep, let it grow to 5/6 trusses then pinch out the tops.

When you do that does that mean that no more trusses will develop on the plant? If so, how many trusses would you allow for cherry tomatoes??

[ButternutSquash]

When you do that does that mean that no more trusses will develop on the plant? If so, how many trusses would you allow for cherry tomatoes??

The idea is to let the plant develop the maximum that it can reasonably ripen in the season. By pinching out you prevent more trusses from forming, just the optimal number. So it does not waste energy on trusses that will not ripen in time.

For cherry toms, they say about 8 trusses. However, last year my Sungold planted outdoors in soil sprawled, and producd ~40 trusses each, of which 20 fully ripened and very tasty they were too. The rest were hit by blight. I ended up giving away ripe toms and I only had two plants. This year I am letting side shoots grow, but I will restrict them to maybe 16 trusses each in total.

You could experiment, do one with 8, one with 12, one with 16, and see.

[ChrisMath88]

Hmmm I'm going to struggle then :-/ I've let mine do what they want pretty much, I have a lot of tomatoes on the 4 plants I've got in the greenhouse.. Ops... Have to see what happens!


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[binley100]

You could always root the tops in water then plant them on to keep goingand maybe even over winter

[Yasai]

.

You could experiment, do one with 8, one with 12, one with 16, and see.

Thanks very much for the reply... will do...

[Scott Hogg]

So try and train them across the greenhouse?

[Two_Sheds]

Last year I let mine do what they wanted too, and indeed they climbed to the roof and then started going down the other side.

Apart from being a right pain for me to get into the jungle, I mean greenhouse, all that foliage was transpiring like mad and fogging up the glass (sweating, in effect). Then mould (botrytis) set in and went about destroying all the plants before the fruits could ripen.

Also, the trusses at the very top kept getting caught in the auto-vent windows, and chopped off



This year I'm keeping them very well pruned