Do I pinch, pull or snip the blossoms so the tomato plants become more "established" before setting fruit? Or do I let Mother Nature have her way?

*****

As long as you took off any blossoms and any small fruits before you set out the plants I'd let these new blossoms go and not pinch,pull, or otherwise maim your plants. ( smile)

THe normal blossom cycle is about three weeks so you aren't far off and we have had some good weather since Memorial Day weekend. I say "we" since I live one mile from the VT border on the other side of Egg Mt from Manchester.

Carolyn

I live near Toronto, and we've had great weather since Victoria day weekend (one week before Memorial day). I too have short tomato plants, but all 6 of them have flowers. Since this is my first year growing things, I'm just leaving them alone - the Italians at work give me my advice - I trust them to know how to grow tomatoes!

For Carolyn and friends.

Hi. I have some nice plants growing in the soil and in containers. All started from seed in my basement. I ended up with too many large red cherry plants and have been repotting some Romas to keep them healthy and hope to sell these soon.

My question is: With the LRC's I ended up adding another bed on my boulevard and the plants were stressed and had already produced some blossoms. I am wondering if I could remove these blossoms? I planted a half dozen that were like this and planted them deep after removing the lower leaves that had turned yellow and wilted.

Normally I use a lattice background (or trellis) and tie off the shoots and get them to grow where I want them to. I sprawl them. The ones on the boulevard I am using stakes and rope tied between the stakes and rope from the top of the stakes to a plant and will guide them up rather than sprawl out. Would removing suckers and lower leaves help me to keep them bushier? They get a full six hours of sun and a couple of shaded hours in the evening.

If the plant is that stressed it'll drop its blossoms anyway. Leave it be.

Removing suckers won't make them bushier, it'll make them less bushy, it's the suckers that make them look bushy.

I have to remove suckers or else it'd be October before I got my first fruit, but if you leave them on your total yield will be higher.

Six hours is considered the minimum for tomatoes. I've grown them in less, but the yield suffers greatly.

Yeah, great weather in Toronto area since Victoria Day weekend, except for the cold snap that brought evening temps into low single digits for a few nights! I had a lot of sunburn after I planted, lost 3 or 4 bottom branches on almost every plant. Planted 42, about 12 have tomatoes on them already (the cherry varieties have 2 to 3 branches of tomatoes already). I am going to try missouri method for suckers...last year's 1-stem-per-plant experiment was not entirely succesful, but I blame that in part on the ridiculously hot and humid weather, and some apparent drifting of pesticides (and some Cuke Mosaic)...lots-o-blossom-drop, catfacing. One to three stems per plant (depending on garden location, number of plants of each variety...i.e. if 3 plants of one variety, will try a few combinations of numbers of stems). Based on some commentary that I read here over the past several weeks, I decided not to pinch off any flowers after planting, which I suppose is the only part of my post relevant to this thread. I do however plan to limit the number of tomatoes that each plant will produce, in an effort to get larger fruits, and to spread out the maturity dates of fruits.