Encouraging tomatoes to flower

[T-lady]

Hi all

I've got some beautiful big (6ft+) tomato plants in the greenhouse and some are cropping / colouring up well. But there's not many flowers around and I'm worried they're stopping.

Any help available on encouraging more flowers please?

[Lavenderblue]

Are you feeding weekly with tomato feed?

I also cut some of the shoots off mine which seemed to encourage more flowers on my plum tomato.

[T-lady]

I'm weekly feeding but which shoots are you cutting off?

[Two_Sheds]

Don't pamper your Toms too much. If they have too big a pot, or too much nitrogen feed, they will produce masses of leaves.

To force a plant to flower, you have to make it think it's dying. It will then try to flower to pass on its progeny before it dies. If it's really, really comfortable, with lots of room and nitrogen, it will just sit tight and comfortable! Treat it a little bit mean by keeping the pot on the smallish side will help too.

nb: This may not make a lot of sense - I've been indoors too long, and am a little cabin-feverish

[T-lady]

Hey Two Sheds. It's a bit late for me to change the growbag / ring pot set up but do you think I should stop feeding them then? I'm only giving them one organic tomato feed full strength once a week.


(Mind you, considerning I had that awful problem with them earlier in the year I am just happy to get anthing off them at all!)

[Alice]

Hello T Lady. I'm not sure what you mean.If your plants are 6' tall and cropping well then the flowers have turned into tomatoes and you won't get any more flowers.
Can you post a pic ?

[T-lady]

Last year my tomatoes continued flowering and fruiting into November - it's just this year they seem to have packed in early. I'll try and get a photo this weekend and post it for additional detail.

Surely they should continue to crop at this early stage?

[Phreddy]

There is a lot of discussion about pruning currently and one system is to prune drastically. Keep just a single stem. Reduce the leaves. The experts say down to a really few.

This goes with 2Sheds opinion, give them a bit of stress!

I don't want to suggest that you do this but google 'tomato Magic' you might find the 'free e book' or just the site selling it.

PM me if you want further info.

Also, a friend gave me some 'sweet millions'. He put his in a greenhouse, me, in the ground. His are a stringy column with few flowers, mine is like a flowering bush. They are sweet and I have millions.

We are in Bulgaria in the heat of course.

[Alice]

Surely they should continue to crop at this early stage?
__________________
I'm just jealous T-lady. I'm just hoping I can get mine ripened before summer ends.
What variety are you growing? Some come early and some come later. Maybe next year you could grow a mixture to spread the crop.
And please do post the pic. Mad I know, but I love looking at everybodies veggies.
This was my Red Cherry in July growing outdoors in Scotland. Colouring now.
Hoping for an Indian summer.

[T-lady]

Rats! I forgot to take the photo and OH has now gone away for a week and taken the camera!

Alice - I'm growing 2o+ varieties so I've got quite a good spread.

This weekend I've had to pull up the outdoors tomato crop due to the dreaded blight. It's heart-rending to do it but needs must. So the pressure's really on the greenhouse crop.