Tomato flowers...too early??

[Growerwith2girls]

First time poster here
I read or heard somewhere that if you have tomato flowers too early you should take them off to make the plant stronger. Is this correct as I have flowers on my tomato plants in my conservatory now??
Trying to upload photo...


Sent from my iPad using Grow Your Own Forum

[eospete]

I got flowers on my foot high moneymaker and tumbling toms second week in April.
Can't imagine there is such thing as flowering too early though I've read with chillis you let the first flower develop to be the king chilli which then inhibit further fruiting so you sacrifice the king chilli for great subsequent yield. They are part of the same plant family so maybe the same is true for toms?
Good question unconvincing answer.
P

[Ja9]

I haven't heard of that one Growerwith2girls. My toms are flowering too as I deliberately started them off early in the greenhouse and they are good sized plants. Usually I just tend to get earlier fruit so personally I wouldn't take them off. If you wish to train up a second main stem to double your crop then take the sideshoot from below the first truss of flowers and allow this to grow, removing all the other side shoots that develop as normal.

[Growerwith2girls]

Cool. Just realised that one of the flowers is now a tomato (happy days!!) so going to leave it.
Still can't post a photo - sure I'll figure that out at some point.


Sent from my iPad using Grow Your Own Forum

[BertieFox]

As long as the plants have been well grown, tomatoes are vigorous growers and taking off a few flowers will simply lose you the earliest fruit while making no difference to the plant growth. I've never had trouble with tomatoes being 'set back' though plenty with aubergines and peppers, where it IS a good idea to remove the early flowers and also to pinch back to encourage bushy growth. Most of these smaller plants will only satisfactorily produce 4 or 5 large fruit so it is best to wait until you can get four or five flowers simultaneously so the fruit all develop at once. Otherwise pick them green, or young and small in the case of aubergines, to encourage more to form, but to get the very large 'supermarket' size fruit you can only allow a couple to develop.

[wetwalnut]

Just to let you know, I think all ipad users at the moment can't upload pictures on this app.

However I have just contacted the moderators to help with this problem, as I too have lots of pics to share


Sent from my iPad using Grow Your Own Forum

[wetwalnut]

Another tomato flower related topic, I had problems with tomato flowers not producing fruit and had realised it was Dry Set.

The flowers form very very small green buds and do not grow on to produce tomatoes. This affected the plants from the 4 th truss and upwards

I was advised to water at the base of the plants,and after reading about dry set you should also mist the plants and flowers once a week to avoid dry set


Sent from my iPad using Grow Your Own Forum

[greenishfing]

I am so jealous. My toms are slowly trying to commit suicide.

[Ja9]

I am so jealous. My toms are slowly trying to commit suicide.

Oh no poor you! At least they are very quick to germinate if u have any seed left.
I grow my plants in large pots standing in a water bath as this did reduce the amount of split fruit from irregular watering. Regarding misting the plants,I'm a bit more brutal. On hot days I have to leave the greenhouse door open before I go to work. To avoid issues with red spider mite on cucumbers, melons and peppers, I tend to blast the greenhouse with the hosepipe , includes the tomato plants too.although in theory they don't like it so humid. It's never been an issue.

[Tomatoking]

Flowers do not always mean tomatoes, as some will not set on lower bunched due to low night time temperatures. Obviously keep plants well watered and keep the humidity quite high on sunny days, but giving the plants a light spray with water.

Never cut flowers of as your plant will lose it's natural control and might then get too vigorous and produce too much foliage.

[Dorothy rouse]

Still can't post a photo - sure I'll figure that out at some point.


Sent from my iPad using Grow Your Own Forum

Just thought I'd mention so you don't get too cross with yourself, you can't upload from your iPad,the App, won't do it, but you can from your iPhone, or your PC.

Hopefully this will get sorted at some point.

[Nannysally99]

Just thought I'd mention so you don't get too cross with yourself, you can't upload from your iPad,the App, won't do it, but you can from your iPhone, or your PC.

Hopefully this will get sorted at some point.

The quicker the better for me