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Here is a picture of our tomatoes. They are coming along nicely. So far, we’ve had enough of the full-size tomatoes (Jetstar) to make a big Mozzarella Caprese and we’ve had enough of the cherry tomatoes (Sweet 100 and Sungold) for extensive snacking and a salad. It looks like we will soon be enjoying many, many more.
This is our third year of square foot gardening. Overall, we have been very successful with this method. But this is the first year we have had success with tomatoes.
What I learned the first year: If you strip all the branches and leaves off your tomato plant, it will not do well. It needs those leaves!*
What I learned the second year: If you strip off all the little branches before they have a chance to blossom you will not grow any tomatoes.
What I learned this year: If I have Pdad decide which “branches” are suckers that need to be removed (as opposed to those which are actually leaves and tomato bearing arms), I will end up with many more tomatoes. Apparently, it is best for me to stick to watering, not pruning.
In addition to watering them and making Pdad the designated pruner, I did do a couple of things right vis a vis the tomatoes this year. Instead of buying the large Early Girl tomato plants at Costco (that we haven’t had much luck with) I bought cheaper tiny ones at the local nursery. My theory was that maybe tomatoes are like trees–better able to handle transplant shock when small. Also, I planted them laying down so that only the very tops poked out of the soil. This is supposed to get you a vigorous root system. What it got me was depressed. I kept comparing my plants to other people’s and they were pathetically small. Pdad (who has no acquaintance with depression or despair) stopped me from ripping them out. Now they are bearing nicely. We make a good team.
* I have been almost as pathetically stupid about this as this makes it sound. In my defense, let me explain for those who don’t know that Mel Bartholomew (the Square Foot Gardening Guru) recommends training your tomatoes to a single stem so that you can grow them in a smaller space. It turns out that I am simply incapable of understanding (or is it correctly implementing?) his instructions on which pieces of the plant to remove.
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4 Responses to “Tomatoes: I’m the Problem”
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We used to prune, then we gave it up and let our tomatoes go wild. I don’t know that you can do that in a square foot garden, but our tomato cages do a reasonable job of keeping them corralled. We have 18 tomatoes in about 50 square feet (three 3 x 6 boxes). Think about not pruning one next year and see what happens.
The only thing we do to “prune” is to pinch of any growth that is budding between two existing adjoining branches.
our very small space I think pretty much requires we break off the suckers using the same method as Ashley. I’ve heard that it also makes the tomato plant put more effort into growing tomatoes vs growing branches but I can’t say since we haven’t tried it both ways. But I do think our small space requires this because even with the “pruning” we have a wall of tomato plants that are close to crowding each other out.
The sweet 100 is my favorite of our tomatoes. It produces a lot of tomatoes and they taste great. Pmom has noted that this is the first plant to complain if we miss a day watering.