On Jun 15, 3:39*pm, "Suzanne D." wrote:
I bought a bunch of tomato and pepper plants yesterday, and some of them
have flowers and/or fruit on them already. *I asked the people at the stores
if I should pinch them off when planting in order to put more energy toward
root-building, and three different people said I didn't have to. *I'd LOVE
for this to be true, but I could swear I heard somewhere that you are
supposed to pinch off the flowers and fruit when you plant. *Can anyone
enlighten me once and for all?
--S.

If you pinch off the flowers the plant will grower larger but will
yield fruit later (total yield will be greater)

If you leave the flowers the energy will go toward making the fruit,
the plant will be smaller, the overall yield will be less, but you
will get earlier fruit.

basically if you have more tomato plants then you really need, don't
cut off the flowers, your yield will be lower but who cares

you can prove this to yourself by pinching one plant and not the
other, that is what I did, the pinched plant will be much larger then
the other, try it.


speaking of experiments I also did the "plant the tomato plant really
really deep method" and one not, there was no difference in yield, the
really deep one grew roots mostly just near the top of the stem, not
all along the stem.

you can prove this to yourself by planing one deep and the other
shallow, at the end of the season carfully remove them and look at the
root mass

to really increase yields you need to have very large plants set out
early, there is no other method that makes much difference, at least
that I know of, various fertilizers don't make much difference