Hard to say with the scant info provided. I suspect the soil medium nutrition is inadequate, esp as you haven't mentioned soil at all.

Dan

I suppose it would be helpful to mention the soil...

Last year I made Mel's mix from 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite & 1/3 compost. This year after the boxes had settled, and I'd cleaned out the prior year's plant remains most of the boxes were an inch or two low, but I didn't have any compost to mix in them. So I used some Miracle Grow garden soil as a filler. I mixed the Miracle Grow into the original medium with a rake so it was evenly disbursed.

The plants that are flowering but don't have fruit are Cherokee Purples that produce rather large fruit, and the ones that are fruiting are Early Girls (small fruit) and Sweet Baby Girls (cherry).

I have 3 Fantastic plants in another box, and they look really good, but the Fantastic in this particular box (that came from the same 4-pack) looks meh.

The wimpy box of toms did have a lot of grass in it when I did my spring cleaning and the rest of the boxes didn't. Could the grass being in there have depleted more nutrients from the soil that the larger plants need in order to set fruit?

Also I am having to hand pollinate my squash and zucchini due to lack of bee activity. Is it time to start hand pollinating the toms too? I thought they pretty well took care of that themselves??

Rachel

I believe it is the general consensus here that Mel's Mix as is has inadequate nutrition and supplemental fert must be added until the soil is built to adequate fertility.

It is impossible to say whether you need to hand-pollinate your toms, as we are not there to see how many pollinators are in your yard and visiting your toms.

Dan

If it is a pollination problem, you might need to try a little harder to attract them to your tomatoes, and possibly your yard, in general.

First, do not use ANY pesticides in your garden. Second, increase the number of flowering plants in your yard. The more flowers you have, the more bees will come. If your yard has a ton of blooms/pollen for the bees, they will alter their behavior to include your plants more often. Consider some very fragrant plants and other plants that really attract bees, such as monarda (also known as "bee balm"). A word of caution regarding monarda, it can be a bit invasive so you'll need to keep up with it or else it will take over, but it's not nearly as aggressive as some other plants (like mint, for example).

Once the bees are in your yard, you then can help to direct them towards your tomatoes. That can be easily accomplished by interplanting some flowering plants near/among your tomatoes. My preferences are marigolds and/or basil (allow the basil to flower...the bees near me LOVE their flowers).

However, it sounds more like a soil issue.

You can also interplant with the squash and zukes. Nasturtiums would be my plant of choice, but most flowering herbs would work as well.

Many other things pollinate toms in addition to bees. Wind, for one. Vibration, for another (how the greenhouse growers do it). Shouldn't be an issue.

Dan

Thanks for the advice, Dan and eaglesgarden.

I guess I just found it odd that that the cherry toms and smaller toms in the same box are putting on fruit, but the plants that produce larger fruit are not. I hadn't considered that it might be a soil issue because of that. Time to get some fertilizer.

Pollinator activity is almost nonexistent in the garden. I used some sevin dust spray earlier this season when I couldn't figure out what the millipedes in the garden were, and I was afraid they were going to kill my squash plants. That's been over a month ago, and I sprayed in the evening per the instructions. Other than that I haven't used any pesticides because insect activity as a whole has been pretty negligible this season other than a couple of grasshoppers and leafhoppers. I haven't even seen any squash bugs. When my nepeta's walker low was blooming, there was a lot of bee activity around those, but that's in the front yard, and the garden is in the back, so I do need something to get them in the backyard. I think I have some basil seed here. I'll try interplanting some of that to see if I can entice the bees to visit the garden.

Thanks again!

Rachel

Cherry tomatoes are generally earlier than, say, a beefsteak type. It's not odd at all that they've begun to set fruit and ripen before the others. As far as them being spindly, I agree that it sounds like a nutrition issue.