Determinates and manual pollination

[Cola82]

So I went to Southern California for a week and fretted while my boyfriend took care of my plants. I was ecstatic to come home and see them not only alive, but blooming! Then I thought, oh, wait, is that a good thing?

All my tomatoes are determinates, so I don't know if picking off flowers from young plants is a good idea, but some of them aren't quite ready for the great outdoors and I was wondering if I should encourage every blossom or be more selective?

In any case, the one that's flowering is one I like to call "The Oak Tree" for it's strong woody stem and bushy branches.





Some of the leaves are shriveled because I forgot to tell him to raise the lights if the leaves started to touch them. Oops.

[hendi_alex]

Early fruit set equals early harvest. Gently tap the branches and that should be enough for pollen exchange. I usually tickle a flower cluster and then tickle the next, that seems to work also. By the time my tomato plants go into the garden the plants are usually loaded with blooms and have quite a few small fruit as well.

[TZ -OH6]

The title and the post are two different things.

If you get the plant in the ground right away I wouldn't worry about the blossoms. I might sacrifice one truss if there were fruit on it and the plant was small and not in the ground yet.

[Cola82]

I'm sorry, I didn't really know how to phrase my question TZ. I'll try to be more clear in the future. Basically I wanted to know if I should pinch off the flowers until I'm ready to plant outside or if I should try to pollinate them myself because it's a determinate and I don't want to miss out on any fruit. I've seen folks elsewhere on the forum pruning early blossom on indeterminates so I wasn't sure what I should do.

Hendi, I'll go ahead and try that. It should only be a week or two more. I'm waiting for our patio to be finished, because once we fill the barrels with dirt, they won't be going anywhere, and I need the place where they're going to rest to be ready for them.

Although I'm going to talk to the boyfriend about installing casters on them, so we won't have to wait and can just roll them into place later. Things on the patio front are moving slower than I'd like.

[gixxerific]

Best thing in the world is an electric tooth brush (an old one hopefully) for pollinating flowers inside. Just hit them lightly right above the flower and watch the shower of pollen.

Of course a tuning harp tuned to middle C works too. Supposed to be the same frequency of a Bumblebees wings.

[Cola82]

Huh, that sounds pretty cool. Good to know.

[tomc]

Tomato (determinate or not) are perfect blooming. There is a very great ado here about segregating tomato bloom. This is rather like putting a condom on after having a vasectomy.

I suppose you could, but I might not bother.

I'd leave the bloom you have alone.

[Cola82]

Just an update: they're doing really great as far as I can tell. The Oak Tree has been moved outside where it has started to put on fruit. I am ridiculously proud and excited.





The plants you see here about half of what I had a week ago--I gave the rest to my grandmother, who couldn't have been more pleased with how good they looked. I just want to say, if it hadn't been for this forum, I don't know what I would have done.

I have been getting a few aphids, and I'm squishing them, but so far it's been manageable.