Growing tomatoes

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Ladybeetle zone 7, TX May 28, 2008

My plants are very healthy looking, about 1 1/2 ft tall, thick stem, indeterminite. I will wind them up on some natural twine and use some cloth strips to tie with. My question is when do I remove the suckers and which ones. Is it the sucker 'after' the first bunch of flowers? Does it help to let the first sucker grow and twine that one up so that there are two branches? Does
this affect the quality of the tomatoes or just produce a stronger plant? When do I fertilize with fish emulsion? I'm growing them in a potting medium that was made up from the recipe from
'Square Foot Gardening' so the soil already has fertilizer in it. I just read about a procedure where you remove all but three leaves .....anyone ever done this? I thought the leaves protected from sun scald, but according to this author the tomatoes need lots of sun. This is the first time I've gotten to this point where everything seems to be growing as planned. Is there anything
I need to be concerned about at this time?

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Bubba_MoCity Missouri City, TX May 28, 2008

Wow, lots of questions. Did you post on the Tomatos Forum?

I did fish emulsion the first year - grew 30' tomato vines with less than 5 tomatoes. Way too much nitrogen in that end of the garden - still too much 4 years later.

Suckers are the stems that grow between the main stem and the leaf branches. It will be another stem and produce tomatoes.

If you want only one stem, remove all the suckers.

Many years ago, that's the way my step-dad grew them, and when they reached 6', he would top the plant. It would then produce tomatoes, but also try to grow more suckers. It was my job to remove them every morning.

Here in Texas, I watched my FIL let them all grow in a hog-wire cage. Very productive, but smaller tomatoes, and some searching to find fruit was required due to the heavy vines.

So now sometimes I stake, sometimes use cages, sometimes just let them sprawl. Still not sure there is any "best" way.

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shebs45 Chicago, IL(Zone 5b) May 28, 2008

I never gave that much attention to my tomatoes. I just stuck them in the ground and let them grow. I did either stake them using long twist ties to tie up the branches, or grow them in cages. When I grew patio tomatoes in a pot, I would occasionally use a fertilizer made especially for tomatoes. I've always been satisfied with the results.

I think besides lots of sun and adequate watering, the greatest influence of size and yield is the species of tomato you grow. There are so many different ones and each one will give different results. Good luck with your endeavor. :-)

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