tomato trusses

[hearts151]

Hi I was quite late growing toms this year end of april I think it was.

Anyway I have read up on toms and removing side shoots and read about removing the main growing shoot once 4 or 5 trusses have set. Becauss I started late I did this after 3.

What I haven't read though is if I should nip out the end of the truss after a certain point. I have what I think are a good sized gardeners delight toms near main stem with what seems to be an ever continuing truss growing out. With it nearing the end of august in edinburgh Im wondering if I should/could cut the end of the truss off so more energy goes to the fruit I have.

Heres some pics so you know what I mean.

[Potstubsdustbins]

From your location I would say that the flowers on the vine have very little chance of becoming decent tomato's.

Potty

[Shadylane]

Do tomatoes work that way though or are we just led to believe they do? I have loads of plants outdoors, which have had no attention, other than being watered a couple of times and been left to sprawl and do their thing. They are covered in fruit and some are even ripening what with us actually having a summer this year. A Black Krim in the greenhouse had a truss of about 6 huge tomatoes and had pretty much refused to do anything else until they started to ripen. Maybe they just know what energy to put where and when.

[esbo]

Do tomatoes work that way though or are we just led to believe they do? I have loads of plants outdoors, which have had no attention, other than being watered a couple of times and been left to sprawl and do their thing. They are covered in fruit and some are even ripening what with us actually having a summer this year. A Black Krim in the greenhouse had a truss of about 6 huge tomatoes and had pretty much refused to do anything else until they started to ripen. Maybe they just know what energy to put where and when.

I found the first full sized ripe tomato I got was on a plant which was never pruned in anyway.
So I would tend to agree with you although it seems to go against the flow of conventional wisdom.
I figure if I leave them on I will at least learn something first hand.

I also figure the plant would not be putting out flower if it felt there was not enough time left? Maybe it is because they are from a different climate.

Don't think I had a frost until Xmas last year!!

[Bill HH]

Given you only have three trusses per plant I would tend to leave them, my gardeners delight has one truss that must be14 inches long and just covered in tomatoes. Dont forget they are small tomatoes, i am not sure if that means they ripen faster or not.

[hamsterqueen]

I start every year by pinching out the armpit shoots and training the plants up the pole, but inevitably forget and end up with branches going all over the place, one plant has 4 sticks to hold the various branches in place, I usually have a huge crop of tomatoes , so I don;t think it makes that much difference really.

[esbo]

I start every year by pinching out the armpit shoots and training the plants up the pole, but inevitably forget and end up with branches going all over the place, one plant has 4 sticks to hold the various branches in place, I usually have a huge crop of tomatoes , so I don;t think it makes that much difference really.

I seems to show here that pruning is better for indeterminate.
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distrib...s/M1218-11.pdf

This one seems to show different but it does not mention the size of tomato.

http://www.agriculturaits.czu.cz/pdf.../kanyomeka.pdf


Seems to be hard to find easy to understand info on this.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distrib...s/M1218-11.pdf

And this one says not pruned is best but it does not say whether determinate or indeterminate.

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~taber...000/tomato.pdf

They are always bad hard to follow unclear studies, waste of time basically

[esbo]

My advice would be to do your own study and prune one plant and leave the other, however in practise this is almost impossible to do IMO as you will forget you are doing a study lol.

[hamsterqueen]

well, I've been growing them for nearly 40 years now, maybe I don't get optimum
yield, but I'm happy with what I get. I grow my veg because it makes me happy.

[Potstubsdustbins]

I think we must all agree that the weather patterns where the grower is based are a great factor when trying to grow a plant from a warmer clime than ours.

The OP is in Edinburgh the days there at this time of year will be shorter than say here in Nottingham, the average temperature could also be lower. This will make a large difference between success or failure.

Esbo Did you notice that the two links where pruning was not an issue were tests carried out (a) In tunnels in Central Namibia (b) In Iowa.

Potty

[esbo]

Well I did notice that the studies were often form the USA, didn't see Namibia though, but I though the same principles should apply. Anyway the studies seemed to support pruning for determinate, so I am not doing my self any favour there. Although they may be others which do not, one I saw didn't but maybe it was for determinate. It may be that a whole lot of other factors have to be taken into account as well.

I found another small Tigerella ripening on the another plant and a bigger Tigerella ripening on another plant so that is four tigerella plants starting to ripen now!! I think maybe some of my Alicante may be about to start ripening but I will need a few more days to be sure, might just have been the light.

I have recently been cutting back a bit on the watering and putting some tomato feed in the water I do give them, apparently water stress helps ripening. It could just be coincidence of course as I have been expecting some ripening for a very long time!!!

I also found something which said that reducing the fruit on a plant makes them take longer to ripen!!!

Tomato Ripening Problems and the Role of Potassium | University of Maryland Extension

in a small study I removed 50% of the fruit (various sizes of all green fruit) from tomato plants scattered throughout a high tunnel. A month later the incidence of ripening problems was about 20% on the plants in which no fruit was removed and almost 0% for the plants that I had removed the fruit.

My first thought was that that was totally contrary to what you would expect, but then I thought that it could be the plants with less of workload of fruit on them felt less stressed but those laden with fruit were stressed by it and so kicked into ripening!!!

Which brings me to another point in that study which may work on the same principle, he was saying the plants had a low K+ uptake despite being in a high K+ soil. I am thing maybe the soil is high in K+ because it is good at hanging on it it for some reason?

Which brings me onto something else I was looking at, which is the surprising fact that people who drink the most milk have the weakest bones!! So milk is full of calcium but the body seems to have a hard job getting it out of the milk and into the bones.


End of ramble lol.

[Thelma Sanders]

Determinate plants have branches that stop with a flower head/tomato truss at the top, there's no need to prune them in the UK - just to support the loads of stems is a problem.

It's usually indeterminate/cordon toms that get pruned to keep them to one branch, and then get stopped if they reach the roof of the greenhouse, or anymore trusses stnad no chance of ripening, as already said.

I always understood that the gases released by the ripening of the first fruits triggered others into ripening.
So it helps to leave a few that aren't quite there, to hang for a bit longer to encourage the others, rather than pick them to fully ripen off the plant.

[esbo]

Actually not quite the end of ramble, because calcium is a factor in bottom end rot, and apparently adding calcium does not work

Maybe the soil is a calcium sponge

[Shadylane]

If you let them dry out, apparently they can't absorb the calcium, so it's more of a watering issue I think.

[Thelma Sanders]

Which brings me onto something else I was looking at, which is the surprising fact that people who drink the most milk have the weakest bones!! So milk is full of calcium but the body seems to have a hard job getting it out of the milk and into the bones.

The body needs vitamin D to absorb calcium. Without enough vitamin D, one can’t form enough of the hormone calcitriol (known as the “active vitamin D”). This in turn leads to insufficient calcium absorption from the diet. In this situation, the body must take calcium from its stores in the skeleton, which weakens existing bone and prevents the formation of strong, new bone.

Calcium and Vitamin D: Important at Every Age