Growing tall tomato plants? Here is a cheap way to make some tomato cages aka trellis to support the vines. I used scrap wood and kite string. (PS Flight of …
Question by ikeepatightship: Why are my 5ft tall/bushy tomato plants not flowering?
I have 4 tomato plants. One is about 5ft tall and is flowering and producing very few tomato’s. Two other plants are just as large as the flowering/producing plant, but these two do not have any flowers and are not producing at all. Then I have a 4th plant that is bushy, about 3-4ft tall and is not flowering or producing. I water almost daily and have used Tomato Tone about every few weeks. I started the plants in early April in my outside garden. Last year I did the same exact thing and each plant produced up to 100 or more tomato’s over the course of a couple months. This year I moved the plants into another location within the garden to rotate the crop. There is a lot of sun that hits my garden all day. I do live in San Mateo California and we did have a late start to the nice hot weather. Any suggestions as to how I can get my plants to start producing flowers/fruit or should i just wait and keep doing what I am doing?
Best answer:
Answer by Obama hood – Spread the Wealth
You need a high phosporus plant foot to get them to bloom. I use this on all my flowering plants. It works great. It is available at any garden center.
http://www.gardensphere.biz/fertilome-blooming-and-rooting-food.html
What do you think? Answer below!
Very good I’m going to do that, thanks for posting.
Very nice :)
Your trellis rig is fine, but try replacing the “silly” hammer with a small
or medium-sized sledgehammer. Using one of those, you won’t need to hit the
pegs (whatever they’re called) more than a few times. I would want to use
either that, even a 10-12lb sledgehammer, if it’s the only kind that was at
hand, which used to be the case, or a large rock. I wouldn’t want to use a
small, regular hammer. When using 1 of those for nails, then it should be
the same; needing only 3 to (max) 4 blows.
The video description has a link to the artists webpage.
I’ll do that, ty.. I am going to try and get Lowes to cut them for me.
.about how long would you have them cut? I did some research and going to
put gallon milk jugs deep by each plant to water them, hope it works out. I
figure, I can just leave the pvc there and use it next year for peas, beans
or something. I used newspaper ,plastic containers for the seedlings and
they look really good and ready to plant already.
nice and easy to do, thank you for sharing your idea. more video please
There easily is no need to spend $ for the wood frame of a trellis, & rope
like for old-fashioned rectangular hay bails is extremely inexpensive, as
are also twine & clothes hangers made of metal wire. Can even just use
smaller dead branches for attaching with small string, like fishing string
or industrial thread, instead of twine, hay bail rope or clothes hanger
wire. And it looks fine & works as well as specially purchased materials.
It’s what I did for my peas; branches & hay bail rope.
Great idea to use kite string. I will try this using some garden stakes!
Thanks for the idea!
I see people say tomatoes grow 12ft I must be doing something wrong mines
never grown taller then maybe 4ft
well they can in a hydro system but in ground you would need the best
everything; soil, lighting conditions, fertilizer, etc not to mention
starting them stupid early indoors i could see a in ground tomato plant
getting to 12ft if they were already 4ft when you put them in the ground to
start with
that is an idea. thanks. (wood rots here so quickly).
I posted about using string, …, before having finished watching the video
& then saw that it’s what you do. But if people don’t have wood for the
frame, then take a walk in wooded areas & grab yourself some dead branches.
Don’t cut up trees or large bushes for this, but look for dead branches.
They’re free & adequate. If they also happen to be cedar or another
water-resistant wood, then great. We don’t have real cedar in the east, but
do have some trees that provide resistant wood.
Sounds like a great idea. It might help to cut the pvc at a 60 degree angle
on one side so that it is easier to pound into the ground. Let me know how
it works out for you.
I don’t understand. The cage is about 3 feet high. Tall tomatoes plants
well over 12 feet…Besides, the string is liable to cut into the branches
when -or perhaps I should say, IF- they get heavy with tomatoes…
could you use pvc pipes with holes drilled in them for the string? I’ve
been using bamboo and it’s a pain.
Thanks for the comment. Happy planting!
Hecka coulda done with out the circus music
I could see where this was going right from the beginning so I skipped to
the end to see the finished product and saved four minutes of my life for
better things.
love it!! thanks!
is that your little sisters hammer?? ..OMG….lmao
3 feet (the length of the scrap wood that I had). Taller would be better
but mine worked out nicely.
Wow, never seen anyone hammer that fast!!!!!!!
How high is that trellis? My tomatoes grow almost 6 feet tall. That little
trellis wouldn’t do much.
The music really does detract, other than that, good job.
Hit the mute button and can your whining.
Tomatoes are fussy about blooming when it is too chilly, under 50 degrees, or too hot, I don’t know that temp off hand, but that could cause a problem.
Well, you do seem to be aware that heat affects tomato growth, but are you aware that tomatoes will not set fruit (no matter how many blooms) when the temperature consistently gets above 90°. Dark color mulch is better in early spring to help the soil below warm, but once the weather is warm you are better off with light colored mulch. Even though you are using a mild, organic fertilizer, is it possible that high nitrogen lawn fertilizer runoff is getting to your tomatoes? High nitrogen can result in tall, green, healthy-looking plants at the expense of blooms and fruit. One final thought, are the tomatoes that you have planted determinate, or indeterminate. Determinate produce all at once, while indeterminate produce over a longer period of time.
A couple of points. You did not mention which “type” of tomato you planted and this is important because each variety has a different DTM (days to maturity). Some DTM’s for early growing varieties are as early as 50 to 60 days, but they are typically a Determinite variety which sets fruit in a span of 2-3 weeks and then stops production completely. Indeterminite Varieties fyi, will yield fruit from the time they first product until the first frost, or in your state, when the weather gets much colder in the late Fall. For instance, “Beefsteak” has an estimated DTM of 80 – 110 days and “Sweet 100’s” has a DTM of 70 days. This means, that from the time you put a Sweet 100 into the ground, you won’t get fruit until the 70 day mark. Keep in mind, that DTM’s are an estimate and located on all your seed packages to give you an idea of when your fruit will set. Additionally, beware of overfertilizing your plants. An overly fertilized tomato plant will give you a gorgeous and bushy plant because the ferilizer is working on the plant’s growth and therefore, will hinder flowering. Trust me, I know… because my first year of tomatos yielded some pretty and enormous plants but NO tomatos!!!! It sounds like you are doing everything right in rotating crops, watering and using TomatoTone. My concern would be overfertilizing — a plant should be fertilized once a month at most and secondly, checking the DTM’s. I am assuming you planted the same seed as last year and in that event, the only theory I have would again, be overfertlizing. Best of luck.