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Brandywine Tomato - Why Few Tomatoes?

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 10:47 am
by Mason P
Ok, I know this has be asked before but I don't think my exact question.
I started a new garden this year, so lots of garden soil and nutrients added.
I planted 6 tomato plants from Burpee, 3 tomando and 3 brandywine.
The 3 tomando plants have tons of tomatoes (30 + each) and are about 4 ft tall. I did nothing but plant the things and tie them up as they grew. No pulling off suckers or leaves. Two of the brandywines are about 5 1/2 ft tall and have a dozen or so tomatoes, way fewer than the tomando. The 3rd brandywine is about 7 1/2 ft tall but only has 2 tomatoes. Again I did nothing but stick them in the ground, water, weed and support. This 3rd plant is right next to the other 2 and right next to the 3 tomando, so it gets the same light, soil, water, bugs, wind, etc.

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2009 5:52 pm
by atascosa_tx
Brandywines are known for not producing many tomatoes..
No matter what kind....or spacing...
To have brandywines have a dozen of tomatoes..you're doing good.
I never got more than 4 off of any brandywine Sudduth.
My area gets too hot too quick.

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 9:12 pm
by Mason P
atascosa_tx thanks for the reply. I have read a little more and it seems like the brandywines do not get that much fruit. I have 12 on one plant, they are all softball size, I picked one today, the rest are not even starting to turn red yet, one plant has 14, some are only baseball size and none are turning red yet. The biggest plant now has 3, 2 big ones and one really small (just started), this plant has lots of flowers 8' up, I don't think they will result in any fruit.

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 10:00 pm
by TZ -OH6
Sounds like your extra tall brandywine got an extra dose of nitrogen some how. That would account for the size and lack of flowers/fruit compared to the others.

Brandywine tomatoes

Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 12:56 pm
by Pipp
Brandywines are relatively late tomatoes. Here in the northeast we had cloud cover/rain for nearly all of June, and the night temps were in the 50's till last week....I have about 2 dozen blossoms on each plant but only 1 tomato that's anywhere near ready to pick. We've had a lousy summer here weatherwise. :?

Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 8:23 pm
by Gary350
I experemented and planted my first Brandywine tomato this year. I planted 1 plant. It is slow to produce. I picked 1 tomatoe about 2 weeks ago, 1 tomatoe last week and about 10 or 12 tomatoes today. The plant has only 2 more tomatoes on it that are not ripe yet. Live and learn.

Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 9:24 pm
by TZ -OH6
Next season you might try supporting the plants in different ways. My caged brandywine has less fruits than my staked and trellised plants. This may be due to more air movement around flowers, easier access by bees etc. The flowers I hand pollinated for crosses set fruit very well. If you are not saving seeds you can use pollen from any other variety of tomato, ... just take a bunch of flowers earlu inthe morning befor bees can strip pollen, pull off the anther cones and dry them for a day so the pollen will fall out when you shake them up, then stick the end of the stigma in the powder. If you are in zone 5 or higher you still have time for newly pollinated flowers to mature before frost.

Garbage

Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 9:08 pm
by Mason P
OK, so 2 of my Brandywines are producing 12+ tomatoes and have flowers / small tomatoes starting now. But I got the fungus / blight thing and they are all disgusting. I threw out a tomato today that was at least 7" round, it was huge. Between my 7 plants I threw out like 50 tomatoes (at least 10 Brandywines) over the weekend. Is there any way to get rid of this fungus or should I just trash everything this year? The 3rd Brandywine plant that has only a few tomatoes hasn't had anything turn red yet but I'm sure they will have it also. It is really annoying to have a decent looking tomato that needs a day or 2 more on the vine turn to a disgusting bruised looking mess in just 1 day. Is it OK to eat the ones that look OK? Some of the ones that I have picked look bad after a day or 2 in the house, then get trashed. Also I think some of the bad ones have made it into my compost pile, I'm expecting to have to trash that whole thing also, so the fungus doesn't live on, or will it die before next spring? This would have been a great tomato year for me if it wasn't for this fungus. :x