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ticodxb

Orange Minsk flowering early? Should I pinch these flower off?

ticodxb
12 years ago

I just planted my Orange Minsk seedling 3 weeks ago on 2/13/12. I see some flower buds already forming even though it is still small...

I was asking on another forum about early flowering on my Sweet Dumpling Squash plant that is still really small and was advised to pinch off the buds so that the plant can concentrate on growing.

I was wondering if its the same philosophy with tomato plants.

Here are the flower buds:

And here you can see the size of the plant (it is in a 30 gallon Smart Pot):

Comments (5)

  • carolyn137
    12 years ago

    There's always a huge debate as to whether or not buds and blossoms should be taken off before planting outside.

    Some remove most of them and leave just a few to get some tomatoes earlier. If I want earlier fruits I plant earlier varieties.

    But once a plant goes into the reproductive cycle of blossom formation and fruit set the energy of the plant is directed more to that process than maturation of the plant itself.

    And for that reason I take off all buds and blossoms as they appear and before planting out.

    Orange Minsk is a variety I got quite a few years ago from Andrey in Belarus from whom I get some wonderful varieties every year. He got this variety at a farmer's market in Minsk, where he lives, and so named it Orange Minsk. The full history can be found at Tania's wonderful online tomato base. I wasn't the only one he shared seeds for this variety with but I was the first to list it in the SSE YEarbook thus making it more available and I did send seeds of it to several seed sites for trial, as I do every year to those sites where I've known the owners for many years, thus making it even more available to the public at large.

    So enjoy it.

    Carolyn

  • ticodxb
    Original Author
    12 years ago

    Hi Carolyn,

    Thank you for the advice..I don't want any early blossoms preventing the plant from growing faster because out here the weather is only going to get hotter so I want it to hurry up and grow.

    That is neat that you helped pass this variety around to others :) Thank you for sharing the seeds! I am excited to try this tomato! It is actually the only tomato planted from seed that is growing successfully for me this season. I should more accurately say it is the lone surviver of my lack of knowledge of growing seedlings (I think I know what I have to do next season to be more successful)

    I was actually looking around the web for more information on Kellogg's Breakfast and somewhere in a discussion of orange colored tomatoes several people raved about Orange Minsk. I got mine from glecklerseedmen.com :)

  • carolyn137
    12 years ago

    And I sent it Adam Gleckler. Each year I send the best of what I grow to several seed sites where I've known the owners for a long time and trust them.

    Just today I was packing up seeds to send to both Adam as well as Glenn Drowns at Sandhill, but those are just two of the places where I send seeds for trial.

    I know you'll enjoy it and if you do I'm a huge tennis fan and would appreciate round trip tickets to Dubai for next year to watch the tennis events there. LOL

    Carolyn

  • ticodxb
    Original Author
    12 years ago

    hehehe my husband was able to get free tickets for the tennis matches from where he works... Though he didn't since we don't watch tennis...I was obsessed about tennis years ago but for some reason lost interest in it...

  • ticodxb
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Well, I pinched off all flowers over the next two weeks and then as the plant grew I decided to leave the flowers because the weather was getting hotter.

    And now that the nights have consistently been in the upper 70s/lower 80s (it sometimes reaches under 75F but probably just for a couple of hours before sunrise) all the blossoms are dropping. I tried keeping a fan on the plant at night to make it cooler but that didn't work. :(

    I can't bring it indoors because first, it is in a 45 gallon pot so it is heavy, and second, it is up on my roof and would be too heavy to bring it down and take back up every night.

    I should have thought about the upcoming weather and left those early flowers even if it only meant I get a few tomatoes.... as opposed to none at all.

    Well, I learned some lessons from this growing season and hopefully I can get successful plants early on so that I actually have tomato-making plants right in the middle of the winter here.

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