Single Stem Tomatoes

[dipchip2000]

Bill

I am pruning very severely in one of my beds. I have never seen it discussed here but I am pruning off all limbs that are not suckers and leaving all growing tips. I have no idea what the outcome will be however I have 50times the blossoms and all seem to be setting fruit. Possibly just smaller fruit or maybe they will never ripen.I dont know, Just a small experiment in one bed to see the outcome from doing it different. Plants are definitely more open for air circulation and maybe less disease. We will see.Plants all 4 to 5 ft tall and appear very healthy and loaded with fruit and flowers.

ron

[b54red]

I've never heard of anyone doing that. Keep us informed I'd like to know how this experiment of yours works out.

[b54red]

Just went out and tied up some of the single stem tomatoes in the bed that was planted on 3/21. Right now 4 tomatoes are absolute standouts with the single stem pruning. They are Tarasenko-6, BTDP, Spudakee, and Indian Stripe. The reason I say they are standouts is the amount of fruit on the plants is amazing considering they only have one stem. Most of the other plants look good but a few don't. Now we'll see if the limited foliage will allow for decent size fruit compared to the plants with multiple stems. It seems that some of the varieties with a more open growth habit do not take to the single stem method as well so I will use the Missouri method of pruning suckers to allow for more foliage and on a couple I can see that they will need two stems to have adequate cover for the tomatoes. Like most places this far south, sun scald can be a problem if the plant has too little foliage.

I haven't had too much in the way of foliage diseases other than a few leaves with some Early Blight and one plant with some Gray Mold. I treated for the Gray Mold with the bleach spray and I am keeping up my Daconil spraying.

I am starting to find a lot of leaves with tiny caterpillars on the underside doing a fair job of defoliating a few small branches. So far hand picking has kept them under control but with the increasing foliage I will soon have to treat with either Dipel or Sevin.

The biggest problem so far has been the number of plants I have lost to the wind. Rarely have I had so many plants get broken off; but the wind was so bad last week that for two days it was dangerous to go in the garden because of small limbs blowing from the nearby trees. The wind also made me delay my regular spraying for over a week and that may have been why the Gray Mold got started.

I planted my final single stem experiment bed Friday and put the plants even closer together. Since it is a small bed I wanted to try some really close and see what happens so I planted these around 15 inches apart. I really feel that this will be too close in our climate but I wanted to try it.

[roper2008]

I'm thinking I may have planted mine too close together, but
they might be okay. Less of a chance of sun scald . I'm single-
stemming 6 tomato plants. I planted these tomatoes really
early in April and they are strong and have flowers. It may
be time to start spraying with Serenade or Daconil now. I'm not
sure.

[b54red]

I think you would be wise to start spraying with Daconil now. I had a little Late Blight as far back as 3 weeks ago. If I hadn't been spraying I think it could have been much worse.

[Tracydr]

Originally Posted by dipchip2000

Bill

I am pruning very severely in one of my beds. I have never seen it discussed here but I am pruning off all limbs that are not suckers and leaving all growing tips. I have no idea what the outcome will be however I have 50times the blossoms and all seem to be setting fruit. Possibly just smaller fruit or maybe they will never ripen.I dont know, Just a small experiment in one bed to see the outcome from doing it different. Plants are definitely more open for air circulation and maybe less disease. We will see.Plants all 4 to 5 ft tall and appear very healthy and loaded with fruit and flowers.

ron

Fifty times the blossoms? What kind of tomatoes?

[dipchip2000]

Tracy

This particular bed has only cherry and salad tomatoes in it. 10plants total. From memory only they are Mountain Magic,Carbon Copy,Jaune Flamme,Santa Sweet,Casino Chips,Blondkopfchen,SunGold,Sweet Quartz, and a few others I dont remember without going out to look. On Saturday the Carbon Copy had 77small greenies that I could count.The rest are equally loaded with fruit and blooms and putting on more fruit and blooms daily. As I said I dont know what to expect but having lots of fun on the journey.

ron

[FILMNET]

Now that you understand this slow down cutting, in 2-3 weeks you get another set of flowers on top of plants. 2nd crop nice large fruits. Then let the plant grow if you are lucky you will get another crop at top of plant, mine grow to 6 ft only. I live outside Boston so we have only May 24 - Sept 1st only 3 months to grow. This worked great 2 years ago and of course my Brandywine was last to rippen the long branch came out at 5ft with huge fruit late in September luckly i tied it up the a fence as the plant died i left the fruit on the branch to ripped which it never did i took it inside.

[Father'sDaughter]

After discovering this site last winter, and finding out about dwarf tomatoes, I ordered some seeds for Tania's and started some indoor dwarfs. I potted them up into three gallon pots and gave two to my father for Christmas. He's been having a great time tending his winter tomatoes and has them by a dining room window.

About three weeks ago I visited for the first time since Christmas, and discovered he's growing them the way he's always grown tomatoes--staked and single stemmed! It's the way he was taught by his father, who was taught by his father, and so on, and so on, for as long as they've been growing tomatoes in Southern Italy. I wasn't about to tell him he should be doing it differently!

The plants are healthy as can be, close to five feet tall, and the Iditarod Red is producing fruit. They've already harvested five or six mid-sized tomatoes in the last two weeks, and there are still more green tomatoes and plenty of flowers on the plant. The Dwarf Champion Improved, on the other hand, hadn't put out a single flower truss, so about two weeks ago he decided to cut the stem back by several feet and is letting a new main stem grow. I heard last night that it is now starting to flower off the new stem.

[Farmette]

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

After discovering this site last winter, and finding out about dwarf tomatoes, I ordered some seeds for Tania's and started some indoor dwarfs. I potted them up into three gallon pots and gave two to my father for Christmas. He's been having a great time tending his winter tomatoes and has them by a dining room window.

About three weeks ago I visited for the first time since Christmas, and discovered he's growing them the way he's always grown tomatoes--staked and single stemmed! It's the way he was taught by his father, who was taught by his father, and so on, and so on, for as long as they've been growing tomatoes in Southern Italy. I wasn't about to tell him he should be doing it differently!

The plants are healthy as can be, close to five feet tall, and the Iditarod Red is producing fruit. They've already harvested five or six mid-sized tomatoes in the last two weeks, and there are still more green tomatoes and plenty of flowers on the plant. The Dwarf Champion Improved, on the other hand, hadn't put out a single flower truss, so about two weeks ago he decided to cut the stem back by several feet and is letting a new main stem grow. I heard last night that it is now starting to flower off the new stem.

In what part of the country does your father live...I am interested in his experience growing throught the yr. And, out of the dwarf tomatoes, which one do you think is his favorite?

[b54red]

Even though it will be a while before I get any ripe fruit and fusarium is starting to really hit some of my plants it is fairly obvious to me which varieties flourish with the single stem method and which don't.

The ones below have fair to good foliage cover and have set more fruit in numbers than their multiple stem counterparts which really surprised me. We will have to wait to see how large and tasty the tomatoes are and compare them.

Indian Stripe
Cherokee Purple
Berkley Tie Dye Pink
Spudakee
Tarasenko-6
Zogola
Black Krim

I did notice that all of the Brandywine types seem to need more stems as well as some others. The plants that definitely need at least 2 stems for sufficient cover and also just do better are below.

Brandywine Sudduth's
Brandywine Cowlick's
Stump of the World
Terhune
Marianna's Peace
Gary O' Sena
Moreton
Donskoi
Oleyar's German
Linnie's Oxheart

I'm not sure about some of the others like Lumpy Red, Eva Purple Ball, Ramapo, Crynkovic Yugoslavian, and Hege German Pink. I also have another bed that is being kept to single stems with some different varieties and will see how they do once they get larger and have set fruit.

[livinonfaith]

This is all very interesting to me as I am trying single stem with the eighteen plants that are in my straw bales.

I've always had tomatoes in 2x2 foot spots and kept them to about three or four stems.

So those took up 576 square inches and now I have three plants in 720 square inches(20"x36") or 240 square inches per plant.

I figure if each single stem plant only gives me an average of 2.5 lbs. of tomatoes, that would still equal getting 6 lbs per plant the old way.

Make sense?

Obviously, I am hoping to get more per stem, but if I could average at least that much, the experiment would be a success to me. It would have proven to be a decent way to try a lot of different varieties in a small space.

[b54red]

One of the main reasons I wanted to try the single stem pruning method was to be able to plant a greater number of plants in the same space. The reason for me is due to the fusarium wilt problem that has decimated my production since I started gardening in this spot. My hope is by planting a large number of plants the fusarium losses will still leave me with a decent number of plants left standing after a couple of months. It has been very frustrating in the past to have the plants spaced nicely in order to keep foliage diseases at a reasonable level only to lose half of the plants before they even make the first fruit due to fusarium. By using the single stem pruning like this I am able to put in 3 times the plants in the same space. I am just waiting to see if I lose 3 times as many plants to fusarium.

[livinonfaith]

Wishing you luck against the fusarium. I know that is horribly frustrating. I also had a lot of problems last year, which is why I'm trying the straw bales this year.

It hurts to put so much into these plants and then have them just waste away.

I thought really, really hard about doing the single stem thing with a few of my forty two varieties this year. When B54red announced he was doing it with a few plants, I decided to not duplicate his efforts and just let mine grow any way they wanted. To compound my potential error, I decided to also plant each of my forty two late frost protection spare plants about eight inches from their germination mates and find out how well tomatoes produce when extremely crowded. I'm not sure how to emphasize this statement, but they have produced very well for me. My tomato jungle is now about eight feet tall and loaded from top to bottom with tomatoes. The tomatoes near the top are tiny, but they get larger and larger as you look towards the bottoms of the plants. I've never had problems with fusarium wilt, but I have septoria leaf spot pretty bad every year. I decided this year to keep drenching the plants weekly with the 10% bleach solution followed the next day with either Daconil or Liquid Copper. Acting together, they have kept the septoria at bay and my plants are pretty healthy with the exception of some Prudens Purple plants which are loaded with large tomatoes, but have very few leaves left on the plants. They look kinda funny all naked like that, but the tomatoes on them look really good. Our really hot summer weather is just beginning to set in for the summer and along with it will come high humidity which may cause more fungal problems due to the crowded conditions. If the only tomatoes that get a chance to ripen are the large ones near the bottom, I will still have a great tomato season plus I already have their replacements growing for my fall planting.

Ted