Gardening for You: Better tomatoes with a strong framework
Is there a more delicious garden vegetable than a juicy, red, vine-ripened tomato just picked from the vine? Today’s column has a tip for growing those luscious, juicy tomatoes.
The cultural principle behind any flowering or fruiting crop is a balance of vegetative (foliar) and reproductive (flowering and fruiting) growth. Optimum quality fruit is achieved with a balance of sufficient vegetative growth to support the eventual fruit load.
One way to achieve this balance is to prune tomatoes by removing strategic portions of a tomato vine. Reasons why this approach makes sense:
• Train a strong framework. Pruning tomato foliage to one or two main growing stems develops a strong framework as unrestricted vegetative growth becomes bushy with few fruit. For optimum fruit development, train framework to a few main stems by pinching off side shoots that form at a node just above a leaf branch.
At nodes is a “V”-shaped space that is formed from the leaf attachment to the main stem. Side shoots emerging from the leaf juncture in this “V” space develop into suckers that grow into large stems that produce flowers and fruit. Suckers not removed eventually becomes a bushy mass of vegetative growth with smaller or fewer fruit. Keeping suckers removed as they appear results in larger fruit over the course of the growing season.
• More efficient photosynthesis. Increase photosynthetic capacity of vines by removing surplus foliage. Pruning increases penetration of light into the canopy. Sunlight drives photosynthesis but with too dense foliage light penetration into the canopy is restricted. When the canopy is less dense, a chain of events is set in motion: photosynthesis is enhanced, synthesis of carbohydrates is increased; carbohydrates are channeled to developing fruit, becoming larger, more flavorful tomatoes.
• Avoiding disease. Incidence of pathogen causing fungal diseases is exacerbated at high humidity levels. Humidity is raised in dense foliage. Removing suckers opens the canopy, promoting air movement, lowering the humidity, reducing disease infestations.
• Increased fruit set. Air flow into the interior of the canopy is improved with a less dense canopy, facilitating fruit set. Tomato flowers are unlike many other flowers. Looking at a tomato flower, the outermost structures are green sepals that surround yellow petals. Inside the petals is a whorl of anthers that are taller than the centermost female pistil. Tomatoes are gravity-pollinated; pollen sheds and falls onto the pistil.
Pollen is released with movement of flowers, as pollen is released it falls onto and pollinates the female pistil. If flowers are not agitated pollen is not released, pollination fails to occur, fruit does not set and the flower aborts. Removing surplus foliage increases air flow into the interior of the vine, facilitating fruit set resulting in larger, more flavorful tomatoes.
Ellen Peffley taught horticulture at the college level for 28 years, 25 of those at Texas Tech, during which time she developed two onion varieties. She is now the sole proprietor of From the Garden, a market garden farmette. You can email her at gardens@suddenlink.net
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Gardening for You: Better tomatoes with a strong framework
