On Jun 18, 1:42*pm, "Tom J" wrote:
fsadfa wrote:
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

You may be correct in areas with shallow soil, but I have a loam soil
that is about 14 inches deep. The tomatoes planted deep in that soil
require 1/2 the watering as those plated to the level they came out of
the greenhouse and produce way more tomatoes. They do have roots all
along the stem that was below ground as well as the original roots.


my soil is over 2 feet deep, I never water though, heavy mulch, guess
the afternoon summer rains never make it down far enough