Get pinchy with your Tomatoes!

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A brief but important message to Tomato growers in Australia - It's time to get pinchy!

A little while back I posted on planting Tomato seedlings. Here’s a tip (or is it 3?) about what to do next. Most of these tips are about pinching and apply equally to the early stages of both determinate and indeterminate Tomato varieties.



Pinch!


  1. Pinch out any early flowers to allow the plant’s energy to go toward more leaf and stem growth.


    Pinch!


  2. Pinch out any new growth coming from where the angle where branches come out from the stem. We want to grow a single strong trunk with well spaced branches. These will make the plant wild and bushier. Leave them if that’s what you like but I’ve found that 'tall and tidy' produces better fruit.


    Later, you'll learn how to propagate entire new Tomato clones from the bits you pinch out but for now they're not really large or strong enough. I'll cover it in another post later on.


    Pinch!


  3. Pinch out any lower leaves near the soil. These will attract pathogens and pests being so close to the ground.

Keep doing the first two until the plant is over 30 cm tall.



Over this season, I’m writing a whole ‘how to’ guide about growing great tomatoes. I’ll be posting it here in installments as different stages of growth are reached or possible problems are encountered. Keep an eye out for it all!



Weirdest thing. Every time I previewed this post while editing, I noticed that the three things listed are all numbered '1)'. No idea why, as the text I posted separates them '1) 2) 3)'. As I said, no idea why and it may even resolve itself later, making this paragraph redundant. PeakD works in mysterious ways!



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13 comments
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thanks for your tips. It's really good to know. I asked myself this same thing many times about whether I should do that because whenever I saw early flowers and leaves, I don't want to pluck it away.

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At first, it took me a while to summon up enough courage to do it but the results have been consistently good over the years.

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Oh bugger, the one job I forgot to do today. Will do after my bath...

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Easy enough to forget, especially when the plants are young. Enjoy your bath!

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Probably PeakD is using two different Markdown renderers, not sure with that tho. In Markdown, you can make perfect ordered lists even when using:

1. Will be rendered as #1
1. Will be #2
1. Will be #3
5. Will be #4
9. Will be #5

But if there are other lines between the numbers, it will revert counting back to #1.

Markdown was rendered well in Ecency, so nothing to worry about your content :)

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Good to know it didn't display badly. I didn't want a list but a series of separated sections. Anyway, all worked out well in the end.

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Thanks for this. We are planning to plant some tomatoes in our school l. This is very beneficial, thank you! ♥️

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