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fred_in_maine

Trimming overgrown tomato plants?

Fred_in_Maine
18 years ago

IÂve never done any gardening before in my life. This is FUN!!! However, my tomato plants are getting a little big and wild. I hope someone can advise me on what I should do. I have a question about trimming my plants.

I am growing tomatoes; 6 plants. Each in their own 5-Gallon container. Started from seeds in the windowsill mid April I did the hardening off thing that IÂd read about during our miserable, wet May. Brief exposure to the outside elements and then back indoors.

I planted all my 6-8 inch babies June 1. In 3 weeks they quadrupled in size and flowers started to appear. July 4th tomatoes started to appear. Now I have around 120 or so green tomatoes. All but one look pretty healthy.

The plants now range in size from 4-6 feet tall and each plant has easily 5 times as many flowers as there are tomatoes on every plant. If this keeps up IÂm gonna be swimming in tomatoes.

My question is:

Should I trim the size so that energy stops going to increasing height and width of my plants and all the flowers that keep popping up all over? I am just guessing that doing so would cause my plants to dedicate energy to the tomatoes already set to help them ripen. Would this help them ripen sooner?

Or is it too early in the season for me to be making major decisions about ripening energy versus growth energy? Should I just leave my tomato plants alone? Let them continue to grow?

Fred

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