Aussie Gardening

[GreenGoldThumb]

Hi everyone,

I am hoping to get some useful advice in a broad community such as this one.

I have had varied success with Tomatoes in the past but not really done much in the way of promoting growth of tomatoes in the plant. I've heard that to get the most out of tomato plants one should remove branches and leaves however haven't had anyone explain which or how many branches or leaves should be removed.

Are there any "experts" out there that have tried and tested methods for growing beautiful tomatoes (and plenty of them????!).

Cheers,

Sam (from Perth!)

[grosh147]

it depends on how you are growing them or what type they are. generally, you just pinch out the side shoots as they appear, leaving one or two main shoots at the top to keep growing. try about 2 teaspoons a plant of epsom salts dissolved in some water, once a week for larger fruit

[Correa]

The removal of shoots is recommended to either reduce or promote apical dominance. Apical dominance is caused by the plant hormone auxin. This hormone triggers cell elongation which is growth.

So if you want a bigger denser bush, you pinch or cut the plant’s main stems. This triggers, outward growth.

So vice versa. If you want a taller bush with less foliage, so there is plenty of sunlight for the tomatoes to ripen and reduce the risk of disease, you probably want one or two main stems. Then the branches coming of these stems, you should keep pinching the tip, to stimulate upward growth.

This should give you a nice dominate stem. A good principal for strong branches is try not let them get any bigger than 2/3 of the main stem.

Good luck

Regards

By the way this applies to vast majority of plants

[person1]

I worked on a hydro tomato farm for a few years.

The process is simple but is very effective and can be adapted to soil.

Plants are grown in whatever medium in rows across a hot house, usually huge things 300m long and about 50m wide. A pair of wires are strung across the shed above each row, about 8 foot from ground level. These wires have to be strong enough to support the weight of every plant in the row.

When the seedlings are about 6 inches tall a long length of twine, most of it wound up on a bobbin, is tied loosley around the base of the stem. The bobbin is then hooked to the wire above the plant.

As the plants grow they are simply looped around the twine, this is done every few days or so depending on the speed of growth. After a bit of practice it can be done very quickly. We used a very loosely woven thickish twine that didn't cut into the stem.

As the plants grow all the laterals (growth from the leaf nodes) are removed, so you are only dealing with the main stem.

By the time the plants are near the wire they need to have their bottom leaves removed as they are dying off and just harbour bugs and mold. These break of quite neatly. By this time your plants will have at least 2 trusses of fruit and a truss of flowers at the top.

When the plants get to the wire you lift the bobbin of the wire, let out about a foot and a half of twine, drop the plant down, and move the bobbin to one side. This of course will cause the bottom of the stem to lie on the ground. This is not a problem in a shed and not a problem in soil either. The stem will be devoid of leaves and may actually grow roots.

This process is continued as the plants grow. When you get to the end of the row the end plant is persuaded around the corner and is grown up along the other wire. In the shed they are actually planted with 2 rows quite close together that end up sharing the twin wires.

Grown this way tomatoes can actually grow to about 10 meters in length and still be productive.

The best tomatoes I have ever tasted have come from the old dying 10 meter long plants. I loved it when a shed was at the end of its life. The last fruit gets quite a bit smaller and was not commercially viable but they were so sweet and packed with flavour.

The image below is similar to what I worked in.