Kitchen Garden Forum

Honestly I did not pay too much close attention as I did not expect my cherry tomato to flower this early. Now I have read how growers pinch off the early flowers to encourage roots to grow more before fruiting. I never pinched them out before because it would be lost fruit after all. How do you all go about this? Do you let them be or pinch them out?

I let them grow.

Well I've never heard of that. And I wouldn't say it is that esrly; some years I have had ripe fruit by mid June on glasshouse tomatoes. I have heard it said that flowers setting fruit after mid summer will be pressed for time to ripen properly.

My aim is to get tomatoes early by sowing early, but then the battle is to get them enough light - if not, they grow leggy, and the first truss forms too high on the plant, meaning it is only just possible to fit 4 trusses per plant before it hits the roof.

It would not even occur to me to remove flower trusses. Interested to hear if anyone says otherwise.

Some people say that -if you remove the early (first) flowers- the plants grows a much stronger root system before fruiting. The fruits coming on it later would then become larger, tastier or better in any other way. I think I'm also just going to let them be, I don't want to waste fruits to find out if this is true or not

I,ve never heard of pinching out tomato flowers. I want my fruit to come as early as possible and hopefully before the dreaded blight attacks start. The only thing I pinch out are sidwshootw on the upright tomatoes. The tumbling ones of course should have their sideshoots left on because its in their nature to go on producing more flowers and fruit.

My tumbling tomatoes outdoors in patio pots or borders are all showing flowers. The upright ones are still lagging behind.

I find if I knock the first truss off accidentally which I have done the main stem stays thin and long before the second truss sets

My 28 tomatoes (7 varieties) in the polytunnel are all in flower. They were sown in the second week of March and I don't consider them to be particularly early this year. I will certainly be leaving on all the first trusses which are already setting fruit.

I have never taken flowers off my tomato plants, the more the merrier ..... Ours (Gardening Delight) are on their second truss, flowering and setting. I give them a good shake every time I go into the greenhouse. just to make sure.

I don't do a diary entry for the first tomato but I think they are a little behind this year, as I posted on another thread I think it is the lack of sunshine in May. But they are coming along, as are the peppers and aubergines.

Geoff wrote:I don't do a ... aubergines.

Now that you mention the aubergines, I really really really wonder what went wrong with the pollination on mine last year! It's a total mystery. The flowers just fell off here. Do you just use a soft brush to pollinate the flowers? I couldn't tell if there were male or female flowers on them because they were all the same...

Yes I hand pollinate them and I don't find the male/female obvious at first. I hate the spines behind the flowers as you hold them to pollinate.

Geoff wrote:Yes I hand pollinate them and I don't find the male/female obvious at first. I hate the spines behind the flowers as you hold them to pollinate.

Yes, you can easily snap them off by accident! For me they just fell off for some reason... I can still try again I think