The tomato is one of our most important garden vegetables. It is prepared in a greater variety of ways than any other vegetable we know. With many home gardeners, it is the most popular vegetable.
Tomato As The Love Apple
It was not always so popular. Known in French as “pomme d’ amour” or love apple, it was regarded as poisonous.
Indeed, it took time to regard other family members, the potato, peppers, and eggplants as edible.
They all belong to the Solanaceae, or nightshade family. Another relative, the dreaded belladonna, is grown for its poisonous drug, hyoscyamine.
Alkaloid Lycopersicon In Tomatoes
In fact, tomatoes contain alkaloid Lycopersicon in green fruits, and potatoes have alkaloid solanine in green tubers.
The alkaloid is destroyed in the processing when green tomatoes are used in pickling and for other purposes. Fortunately, people avoid using green potato tubers.
Setting Tomatoes In Ideal Temperatures
The tomato, eggplant, and pepper are all warm-season vegetables. However, these plants are highly frost-sensitive.
In addition, tomato flowers fail to set fruit if temperatures stay below 55° degrees Fahrenheit. Conversely, too high temperatures can also have a bad effect on fruit sets.
Often gardeners notice poor fruit sets when plants are first put out because of low night temperatures. This can be offset by using hot caps or waiting to transplant until warmer weather.
Fruit-Setting Hormones
Fruit-setting hormones help induce these first blossoms to produce a crop of tomatoes.
They are available in aerosol cans or can be mixed with water and applied with a spray gun. In any event, put the hormone on the blossom clusters and not on the foliage.
Wide tomato varieties are on the market today. Some new ones are hybrids and show great uniformity in growth, size, color, shape, and other characteristics.
Tomato Varieties
In general, tomato varieties fit into two categories:
- The staking or indeterminate varieties
- the non-staking, determinant, or bush varieties
Staking Group of Tomatoes
Some of the varieties in the staking group include:
- Earliana
- Stokesdale
- John Baer
- Marglobe, and many others
Two well-known bush varieties are ‘Bounty’ and ‘Victor.’ The last two are normally not staked and require no pruning.
They spread over the ground much in the way that cucumbers and other vine crops will spread.
The bush types are best adapted to short-season areas such as the northern Great Plains and New England.
The staking or indeterminate varieties are the most widely planted and respond best to staking and pruning.
Rewards In Staking And Pruning Tomatoes
These are some of the rewards often gained from staking and pruning:
- Ripening earlier; and more early ripe fruit.
- Because plants arc spaced closer, the yield per area is greater.
- Diseases and insects are easier to control.
- The fruit is cleaner.
- The fruit is easier to find and pick.
Disadvantages Of Pruning and Staking
Disadvantages of staking and pruning are:
- The higher amount of labor involved
- A smaller total yield per plant
- Greater susceptibility to blossom-end rot disease
- More chances of sunburn on fruit acid and more growth-cracked fruits.
Methods In Pruning
Methods of pruning, staking, and tying tomato plants vary. However, plants are usually trained so that one vine or main stem is developed.
Sometimes there is an advantage in training them to two or three main stems, but the single-stem method is most often used.
If left unpruned, the plants produce a multiple-stemmed plant.
Pruning simply involves removing the new shoots as they emerge, which would make the plant multiple-stemmed.
New shoots develop at what is called the axils of the leaf; that is, at the base of the leaf. The new shoot looks like a new young tomato plant.
It arises where the leaf joins the main stem. Plants should be checked every few days to eliminate these shoots.
They are simply broken out with the fingers. It is better to use a knife to break them out by hand, for the knife might spread disease.
Difference Between These New Shoots And The Blossom Clusters
The important thing is to recognize the difference between these new shoots and the blossom clusters. Compare Figures 1 and 2 to see the difference.
I have known new gardeners to unwittingly remove all their blossom clusters while pruning their tomato plants.
Plants pruned to single stems should be provided with stout stakes (½ by 1” inch) when the plants are set out.
Staking Single Vine
As needed, tie the single vine to the stakes. Use a soft string or cloth first, making a loop around the stake and then another loop around the vine to secure the vine to the stake.
Make the tie just below a leaf, and do not tie so tightly as to squeeze off the food and water supply through the stem.
Pruning and tying must be continued through the growing season as needed to keep the plants in proper shape.
44659 by Leonard A. Yager