Tomatoes not setting

[larkspur]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this. Can anyone suggest why some of my tomato trusses have not set. What is the consensus of pinching out the side shoots or leaving them.

[FelixLeiter]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this. Can anyone suggest why some of my tomato trusses have not set. What is the consensus of pinching out the side shoots or leaving them.

Lack of pollinators is the usual reason for not setting, although high temperatures can lead to flowers and fruits dropping prematurely. When I say lack of pollinators, tomatoes are actually quite capable of pollinating themselves, but they do need a little help to get the pollen stirred around a bit. You can agitate the flowers yourself by giving them a little shake. Bees are better at this than we are, but if they've gone to ground because of cool and wet weather, we have to step in.

Pinching out or not has no bearing on the ability of a tomato to set fruit. It's more to do with room. If you've space for a bushy tomato, let it maraud unchecked, but usually in a glasshouse we side-shoot (it's not actually pinching out so much as breaking out of the developing shoots with a downward action) to keep the plant to a single stem and within bounds.