On 2005-05-25, tomatolord wrote:
If you pinch the suckers then the plant will produce larger fruit and be a
taller plan
if you dont
then the plant will produce more fruit but they will be smaller.

Remember a tomato has to GROW in order to produce fruit - every 3-5 inches
produces a flower stem for fruit.

I used to pinch but dont any more as I grow mostly heirloom tomato's that do
not produce that much to begin with.

It all has to do with the fact that a tomato plant can only support so much
fruit versus actuall plant the more physical plant the smaller the fruit
becuase some of the energy is going into supporting the plant itself.

My tomato's are currently 3 feet tall becuase I use wall o waters to get
them going before the heavy summer heat comes in.

I also use large amounts of leaf compost and I do not till, just plant right
into the mulch.

Sincerely
Tomatolord


I see you got a nice write up in the N&O on your heirloom tomatoes.




"Don S" wrote in message
...
I was looking through some of the info on the NCSU web site, and came
across
the following comments in :

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-8107-b.html

"Indeterminate types produce a shoot or "sucker" at each leaf axil. These
suckers, if left undisturbed, grow into larger stems and produce fruit."

and

"Plants growing in cylinders are normally spaced 3 to 4 ft apart in the
row
and are not pruned; rather, the suckers are pushed back in the cage to
force
them to grow upward in the cage."

I had always heard to pinch off the suckers as they appeared. I wonder
how
much other "rules of thumb" I may be misusing. Are there any good web
sites
on growing/maintaning tomatos in NC ?




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