Tomato plants!

[headfullofbees]

Headfullofbees: I know I have heard of this before but I never knew what it was called. Will a cage or tying still control the side shoots?

Yes. Cordon tomatoes are vines; they will try to grow upwards, but you can train them how you want.

I use bamboo canes like this I-I-I and tie the side-shoots in to the laterals, using velcro plant tie.

Some commercial growers pinch out the main shoot when the plants are tiny.
This causes sideshoots to grow from the cotyledons (seed leaves) and they use spiral supports to train these sideshoots.
Because they can maintain perfect conditions, they can get upwards of 100 trusses per plant.

 

[Chuck]

Yes. Cordon tomatoes are vines; they will try to grow upwards, but you can train them how you want.

I use bamboo canes like this I-I-I and tie the side-shoots in to the laterals, using velcro plant tie.

Some commercial growers pinch out the main shoot when the plants are tiny.
This causes sideshoots to grow from the cotyledons (seed leaves) and they use spiral supports to train these sideshoots.
Because they can maintain perfect conditions, they can get upwards of 100 trusses per plant.

I am trying to grasp how you folks grow tomatos. Are you growing indeterminates or determinates when you remove the side shoots? At times on determinates I have lost the main shoot by hail or from varmints just as the buds were forming. At first when this happened I kept the plant but I found production was terrible. Now when it happens I remove and replant. I think I understand your use of espalier if used on indeterminates. However, in most if not all of the US the removal of a large percentage of the foliage is not a good idea because we have intense sunlight in the summer. I have yet to understand why you remove a lot of the foliage on tomatos. A plant cannot grow without photosynthesis and removing a lot of the leaves, it seems to me, would be a detriment to this. I understand that your sunlight is rather limited during the summer but it seems to me that you would want as much surface area to absorb the sunlight as possible. Would it be like growing a tomato under a tree in partial shade? I'm baffled and befuddled.

 

[headfullofbees]

Growing tomatoes is a very different activity in the UK.
We remove the side-shoots from indeterminates, of course, because our season is so short that we'd have only leaves, and maybe loads of tiny, green tomatoes at the end of the season, if blight didn't get them first.

We remove a lot of the lower leaves to increase air circulation, because our climate is so damp that lots of leaves near ground level is just asking for disease.

When we grow indeterminate tomatoes outdoors, we have to restrict them to about five trusses, in order to succeed in growing decent, medium-sized tomatoes that have a chance of ripening.

Basically, our climate is not really suited to growing tomatoes, but we love them, so we don't let that stop us.
We compromise where we must, and accept the necessary restrictions.

 

[Chuck]

Growing tomatoes is a very different activity in the UK.
We remove the side-shoots from indeterminates, of course, because our season is so short that we'd have only leaves, and maybe loads of tiny, green tomatoes at the end of the season, if blight didn't get them first.

We remove a lot of the lower leaves to increase air circulation, because our climate is so damp that lots of leaves near ground level is just asking for disease.

When we grow indeterminate tomatoes outdoors, we have to restrict them to about five trusses, in order to succeed in growing decent, medium-sized tomatoes that have a chance of ripening.

Basically, our climate is not really suited to growing tomatoes, but we love them, so we don't let that stop us.
We compromise where we must, and accept the necessary restrictions.

So you basically only grow indeterminates of medium fruited varieties. Here it is difficult to grow large indeterminates because it takes so long for them to ripen and because it gets too hot so soon in the year for them to keep setting. There is a big effort here to hybridize tomatos that will set fruit later and later into the hot weather. What about early setting determinates? Here they do marginally well and it would seem to me that these would be more in tune to your climate and would produce much longer with your diminished sunlight. This year I tried 2 varieties of small fruited indeterminates and 1 variety of med-large, all of which are hybrids These 3 varieties are northern tomatos and not supposed to do well here at all. They ended up being some of my best producers and I will grow them again next year. They actually set fruit earlier and longer than the recommended varieties. Of course everything is about dead now, but these varieties lasted as long as the rest did. I wonder if you would have the same results if you tried varieties that weren't recommended there but varieties that are recommended here, just about the opposite climate?

 

[headfullofbees]

So you basically only grow indeterminates of medium fruited varieties.

No. I mean we only remove the side-shoots from indeterminate varieties.
To some extent, determinate bush varieties are easier to grow here, they often have smaller fruit, and fruit earlier.
Bush-type cherry tomatoes are very popular, as people here put them in hanging baskets and spend their summers trying to keep up with watering them.

The difficulty here is getting ripe tomatoes when people want to eat them, i.e. salad days in the "summer", and that's why I don't grow beefsteak varieties, and why the overwhelming majority of medium tomatoes in the UK are grown under glass.

There's no real difference to "northern varieties", they are just quicker to mature.

 

[prettyinpink13]

Hi everybody! I guess I should have kept up on this thread! I have learned so much from reading your posts! So from what I read I should pinch off the side shoots, find a good fertilizer, and cage my tomatoes.

 

[headfullofbees]

And read the organics forum.

 

[MindyT]

Wow. I found all that information so interesting and different. I can just leave my tomato plants alone, and they are fine. Well, I do cage them so the lower tomatoes do not rot. They grow like weeds in my yard.

 

[prettyinpink13]

And read the organics forum.

YES! Of course that too! I really found that forum was full of information.

 

[prettyinpink13]

And read the organics forum.

YES! Of course that too! I really found that forum was full of information.

 

[prettyinpink13]

Wow. I found all that information so interesting and different. I can just leave my tomato plants alone, and they are fine. Well, I do cage them so the lower tomatoes do not rot. They grow like weeds in my yard.

I used to be able to do that but then I moved and the soil is different so I'm not sure they are getting enough nutrients and I just can't keep the weeds under control. I'm just not getting the amount of tomatoes I have gotten in the past years.