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Gardening Health & Lifestyle

Follow This One Tip In Your Garden & Get A Ton Of Organic Tomatoes!

Follow This One Tip In Your Garden & Get A Ton Of Organic Tomatoes | WholeLifestyleNutrition.com

For many years now I have been growing my own organic tomatoes! When I first started growing tomatoes I quickly noticed that there were a ton of varieties and that some varieties did better than others.

I seemed to have better luck with certain varieties like bush tomatoes and Roma tomatoes but had no luck with others that were heirloom tomatoes, Beefmaster or Brandywine varieties. What was I doing wrong? Why was it that I couldn’t get these varieties to grow and produce a lot of tomatoes?

So I began to research and found out a ton of information and began making some changes! Over the next few years I implemented these changes and have had tremendous success ever since! Here it what you need to know!

 

Different Tomato Varieties

 

There are two different types of tomatoes plants, determinate tomatoes and indeterminate tomatoes. Both variety of plants are very different and it is important to know which kind you have so you can properly care for your tomato plants.

Determinate Tomatoes – determinate tomatoes are tomatoes that do not require staking or pruning and do not require the removal of “suckers”(explained below). These tomatoes are usually bush varieties and only grow about 3-4 feet and then produce their fruit. Plants blossom and develop at the same time over a 4-6 week period of time.

Indeterminate Tomatoes – indeterminate tomatoes are tomatoes that grow throughout the season and usually need to be staked up and require weekly pruning or the removal of suckers (explained below). They will continue to grow and produce until a frost comes.

To find out which kind you have in your garden, here is a list from The Henrys’ Plant Farm:

 

Tomato Varieties List

So as I stated above, my determinate tomatoes were doing great and did not require the removal of suckers. So the problem I was having was with indeterminate tomatoes. These plants would grow nice and tall but very few tomatoes were being produced. After doing some research I realized that I was not removing the suckers on my plants. Suckers?? Yes, suckers. Let me explain.

 

Removing Suckers

 

Suckers are little plants that grow off of the main stems or leaders. They form at the “Y” of two branches like pictured below. When these suckers form they strip the main plant of its nutrients and the central plant will not have the energy to produce a lot of tomatoes. So in an indeterminate variety, it is imperative to remove these suckers so that the main plant has the energy to produce a ton of tomatoes!

Follow This One Tip In Your Garden & Get A Ton Of Organic Tomatoes | WholeLifestyleNutrition.com

Here is how you remove suckers from your indeterminate tomato plants. You want to wait until your suckers are at least 2-3 inches in length. Look at the photo below. At the “Y” you can see a sucker that is about 3 inches long. It is important to note that you want to remove suckers that are below a flower cluster as shown in the picture. Do not remove suckers above the flower clusters. This is new growth and will produce more tomatoes, so only remove the suckers that are below flower clusters.

Follow This One Tip In Your Garden & Get A Ton Of Organic Tomatoes | WholeLifestyleNutrition.com

Now with your fingers, follow the sucker to the base of the plant.

Follow This One Tip In Your Garden & Get A Ton Of Organic Tomatoes | WholeLifestyleNutrition.com

Snap off the sucker at the base and discard. By removing the sucker off of the main plant you are allowing the central plant to have more energy to produce more blossoms or tomatoes and you will dramatically improve your production of tomatoes.

Follow This One Tip In Your Garden & Get A Ton Of Organic Tomatoes | WholeLifestyleNutrition.com

You will need to remove your suckers on your indeterminate plant every 7-10 days. Make sure the leaves on your tomato plants aren’t wet when removing suckers so that you aren’t spreading diseases. You can remove suckers any time of the day, it will not harm the plant. Again, I want to stress, only remove suckers on indeterminate varieties and not on determinate varieties.  Here is the Tomato Variety List, once again from The Henrys’ Plant Farm.

I hope this information is useful to you and you are able to have a ton of delicious tomatoes this year in your garden! Happy Gardening Everyone!


Halle Cottis/Whole Lifestyle Nutrition is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

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Comments

  1. Bobbi Erdmann Lazewski says

    June 21, 2012 at 12:30 pm

    Awesome article ! Thank you

    • jean says

      May 9, 2020 at 2:15 pm

      I understood not just sucker but the leaves also were supposed to be removed under the lowest blossom?

  2. Carol Ann James says

    June 21, 2012 at 1:29 pm

    Instead of discarding the suckers you can pop them in pots of potting soil and growm on as new plants. I got 6 plants off 1 I bought this year and all are doing very well! I got the idea from The Wisconsin Vegetable Gardener.com

  3. Whole Lifestyle Nutrition says

    June 21, 2012 at 2:31 pm

    I suppose you could…thanks Carol, I will update the post 🙂

  4. Whole Lifestyle Nutrition says

    June 21, 2012 at 2:32 pm

    So Carol, did you put the plants into water and allow the roots to form first, or did you plant directly into soil?

    • Donna Putney says

      June 26, 2016 at 4:37 pm

      You can put them in water and they will root, or you can put them in a pot of soil in the shade for a few days and keep moist till they root.

  5. cosibar says

    June 25, 2012 at 4:38 pm

    @LetThisMindBinU Thanks. I was aware of the suckers but didn’t know it was only for the indeterminate varieties. Great link!

  6. LetThisMindBinU says

    June 25, 2012 at 4:44 pm

    @cosibar Ack, I didn’t even know about determinate/indeterminate varieties. Mine are all indeterminate this year, so I’ll see what happens!

  7. cosibar says

    June 25, 2012 at 5:13 pm

    @LetThisMindBinU Hope so too.

  8. Cult of Kale says

    June 27, 2012 at 6:19 pm

    Great information! Thanks for sharing!

  9. TeresaTiarasTantrums says

    June 28, 2012 at 10:04 am

    love this hint! going out to check my plants now!

  10. 4joy says

    June 28, 2012 at 7:29 pm

    The fact that you shouldn’t remove suckers above flowers was unknown to me…..nice pics and information… 

  11. lom8nance says

    June 29, 2012 at 7:24 am

    Thank you for this information, Halle! I’m going to try it! Thank you for sharing at Rural Thursdays this week. xoxo

  12. CarrieCookeRaab says

    July 1, 2012 at 2:34 pm

      Hey Halle! Awesome tips and instructions! I was told to do this, but
    your explanation and photos helped me ‘comprehend’ the reason why.
    Thanks!! Thank you for sharing with us at Healthy 2Day Wednesday. Hope
    to see you again real soon! Blessings! Carrie @younglivingoillady.com

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small head shotWelcome! I'm Halle Cottis.

I'm on a mission to liberate women who are not living true to themselves to walk into life being EXACTLY who they were meant to be. I believe that women should put themselves first. When you choose yourself today, amazing things can happen.  I'm glad you're here! ❤Learn More →

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