Size of tomato blossom determined by?

10 years ago

Genetics? Health of plant? Environment? I've got some tomatoes in a green house and some of the blossoms are huge. They're really swollen and elongated. I'm used to seeing blossoms that are small. Some of the largest blossoms were found on a San Marzano Redorta. I've grown this one before but never remember blossoms this large(like round nickels). Some of the other types are beefsteak types.

Did the greenhouse environment do this? Is it the genetics? I got my seed from Gary Ibsen from Tomatofest.

Plants vary in size the ones doing better are about 2 feet high now and have the large blossoms.

Meanwhile my container grown San Marzanos in the open air have much smaller blossoms but tons of tomatoes forming(plants were suckered off from plants started in March 2012, suckered from suckers in another location just prior to bad weather and kept indoors until early April. I know San Marzanos are smaller. Have I answered my own question? Ha!

Comments (7)

Djole
10 years ago
Sounds like you have megablooms. There have been discussions about it on the forum already, you can use the search function to find some older threads on the subject.

Djole
williammorgan
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks,

I'm sure I've seen it before but just looked really weird having not seen it in a while. Other blossoms on these plants are just really long. Should be interesting to see what they produce(the long blossoms) or the plants in general.
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williammorgan
Original Author
10 years ago
My mstake it was the Costoluto Genovese tomatoes that have the megablooms. Inspecting one I can see it will produce two fruit. Of the 3 plants I inspected all 3 have at least one megabloom. I wonder if this variety is prone to that? This is my 1st time growing this one.
digdirt2
10 years ago
Fused blooms are usually caused by cool temp issues at the time of formation and any variety can have it. Fused blooms produce very distorted fused fruit and they are often terminal blooms too which is why many remove them.

As mentioned, many discussions here. Search 'megabloom' and 'fused bloom' for info.

Dave
Djole
10 years ago
Yes, Costoluto Genovese is somewhat prone to it. It megabloomed on me last season too, while some other varieties didnt.
williammorgan
Original Author
10 years ago
Perhaps it happened post an extreme hot period? We had 3 days of 95 degrees and then a drop off, tropical storm with cooler darker conditions. I searched for the megablooms and found some info but nothing specific to this variety so it's relative as another chimes in that the same happened to them. I also did not see much about what exactly causes it.

While the one tomato is producing gum ball blosson my San Marzano Redortas have nice singular long ones. I hope to have many nice long and thick wall sauce tomatoes. My most aggressive plants too(who have experience +120 degree temps.).
digdirt2
10 years ago
I searched for the megablooms and found some info but nothing specific to this variety

No you likely won't find anything that is variety specific because the condition isn't variety specific. It can and does happen more frequently in heirlooms rather than hybrids and is more common in beefsteak types than paste or hearts or cherries but it can happen with them as well since it is air temp caused, not varietal caused. Since it is far more common in early spring and first fruit set clusters it is normally attributed to cooler temps.

But it isn't considered a serious condition in any way, poses no threat to the plant, so as I mentioned most growers just remove them and don't worry about it.

Dave