Matthew Reed wrote:

I have some tomatoes growing like crazy - including putting out healthy
suckers. Is there any generally agreed on "best" way to grow tomatoes? Pinch
suckers? Tie to trellis? Let sprawl? Any voices of experience here that
would like to comment?


Matt,

If you want bigger tomatoes you should pinch those suckers. If you let
the suckers grow you may or may not get tomatoes from them. Some
varieties do better that others when it comes to producing tomatoes from
sucker growth. I do know some people that cut off the suckers and stick
them (deeply) into the ground and grow additional tomato plants from
them. Once cut off the mother plant they seem to produce normal growth
and a normal crop of tomatoes.

I use tomato cages or stake my tomatoes. That keeps the tomatoes off
the ground and keeps the tomatoes cleaner. Staking also seems to
produce tomatoes that ripen more evenly than ones left on the ground to
ripen. This page from my web site (third picture),
http://members.iglou.com/brosen/page13.htm shows one row of my tomato
plants. I usually grow over 100 plants each year. All the extra
tomatoes we grow go to the neighbors.
--
Bill R. (Ohio Valley, U.S.A)

Gardening for over 40 years

To see pictures from my garden visit http://members.iglou.com/brosen

Digital Camera - Pentax *ist DL

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