Thanks, Dave. We haven't pruned at all and we use a fertilizer specifically for tomatoes, but we've had some pretty strange weather lately (mid-90's and humid during the day, 60's at night, torrential rain), so maybe that's it. Thanks for the info!

Don't know your location, but it looks relatively early in the tomato season for you. I've noticed that the first couple trusses of blooms have a lot of deformed and underdeveloped buds, both in my container plants and the ones in-ground. The problem mostly goes away as the plant gets more mature, although occasional fused blooms, newer buds atrophying on trusses that have a lot of blooming flowers, etc. still seem to happen sometimes.

Your plant does look sparse for plants that haven't been pruned, though. So unless you're growing a variety that just grows that way or the sparseness is just the result of camera angle, I would reexamine the factors Dave mentions. And maybe add growing medium to the list of things to look at. What are you growing in?

maybe it is that torrential rain! and it seems the hybrid plants are kind of funky, not sure if yours is a hybrid. youtube has info on giving aspirin to tomatoes and others. worth looking into! i think i overdid the aspirin thing with mine though!

Home remedies like this often end up being a huge mistake, especially for something like this that isn't really a problem. Although I suppose learning this firsthand is kind of a gardening rite of passage.

gorbelly, we live in Central Illinois, zone 5b I believe. We're also renters, which gives us limited options - we have to grow in 5 gallon buckets, and the only location we can put them in gets maybe 4-5 hours of direct sunlight. I know it's not ideal, especially for tomatoes, but we have to work with what we can. We just enjoy it as a hobby until we can get a big yard that we can dig up and plant to our hearts' content. :)

All the tomatoes we're growing are heirloom varieties, from Baker's Creek. They're all on the leggy side, probably from lack of sunlight/small containers, although last year the same varieties did much better... maybe it's the insane weather early in the season this year. So I think these buds (and the legginess) are just something we'll have to live with until we can get a proper garden in the future.

Thanks for the input!