Should I leave my sideshoots

[Davyburns]

Hi Haza

Ok, first of all if a dominant shoot takes over and is healthier, cut off the head of the plant and leave the shoot on. As for the other shoots, cut them all off. if you do not, your plant will not develop or give it's best yeild. I understand it is a hard thing to do at this time, but in the long term it will be better. If they are really big use a sharp knife and cut them as low as possible at the joint, or all you will get is lots of foliage and plenty flowers, but the fruit setting will suffer.

It sounds like you have some very big shoots which might be confusing you.

cut off ALL the shoots no matter how big they are or which angle they are growing.

This is why

[womble]

Well I'll have to bow to TK's experience, but in my experience, having a sideshoot or two flower and then stopping them, makes absolutely no difference to the rest of the plant, carries on as normal.

[Davyburns]

Well I'll have to bow to TK's experience, but in my experience, having a sideshoot or two flower and then stopping them, makes absolutely no difference to the rest of the plant, carries on as normal.

I probably should have left one or two as an experiment.

Too late now

[womble]

There is always next year, always Which is good as the perfect growing year never seems to happen.

Next year it will, lol

[Tomatoking]

Well I'll have to bow to TK's experience, but in my experience, having a sideshoot or two flower and then stopping them, makes absolutely no difference to the rest of the plant, carries on as normal.

Hi Womble

I am sure you will not notice a big difference.
I do find I get better quality trusses on the main stem than on shoots and cordon tomates are developed to produce better this way, in quality and uniformity of the fruit.

However, this is a bit irrelevant to amateur growers so do what you feel is best for you. Its part of the fun of growing.

[womble]

I do find I get better quality trusses on the main stem than on shoots and cordon tomates are developed to produce better this way, in quality and uniformity of the fruit.

That's something I haven't noticed, because I wasn't looking for it.
I will keep an eye on the size and uniformity this year, I have some toms with sideshoots flowering now.

I think it makes a difference with different varieties as well. I haven't done enough proper experimentation tbh, noting down what I do, I've just noticed things on the fly.

I just like doing different things, last year I grew a tomato plant on top of a compost heap and stopped it at (I think) 2 trusses, it produced fruit quicker than the greenhouse toms.
This year I have an outside Ferline, which I've stopped at one truss and allowed 2 bottom sideshoots to grow to one truss each. I'm interested to see how it will do. Atm it's running a bit behind the GH toms, but that could be because it's in a bad place. I want to see how the fruit ripens and develops.

[Tomatoking]

Womble, I would have had the perfect job for you, it's just that it is about 25 years too late!

We had an advisory service on the Island with about 40 staff. Their job was to test different growing methods and also tested varieties for yeild, uniformity, shelf life and taste.
Every tomato was weighed from each plant to see which produced the best results.
Someone I once worked for ignored their advice and we grew a 'none recommended' variety. We had the earliest crop and a fantastic yeild, but the shelf life was usless and in the end the distributors banned this variery. I don't think it even tasted that good, but I think a lot of people might say that about commercially grown tomatoes.

[womble]

Get a JOB!

It's a radical idea