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My father grew up on a farm that was mostly for subsistence. He said to pinch off the first few green tomatoes to improve yields. I occasionally do this but hav
by ruffrey 5y ago
My father grew up on a farm that was mostly for subsistence. He said to pinch off the first few green tomatoes to improve yields. I occasionally do this but have not tried to measure any yield differences.
- h2odragon 5y agoThat's simple pruning; the plant can be encouraged to grow more foliage before it turns its attention to making fruits; thus making more plant mass available to do the fruit growing. In my experience that tends to encourage more, smaller fruit; which is good cuz it reduces loss to insects etc (they ruin a whole fruit at a time). If you want a single tomato the size of a child's head, tho; let it keep the first few it sets and then pinch flowers before they open after that.
- ineedasername 5y agoIt feels kind of wrong to use "child's head" as the unit of size for a tomato. Maybe because of all the slicing and chopping we often do to tomatoes before we eat them.
- h2odragon 5y agoSalesman said "it's a family size freezer!" ... I says, "not unless you chop them up first."
- shakna 5y agoThis process is called "thinning" [0] (as distinct from pruning), and is employed by farmers the world over. And has been done for several hundred years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinning#In_agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinning#In_agriculture