On the Pacific coast we get intermittent sun alot. Clouds roll in, the fog rolls in, lots of rainy days, last couple of seasons we have had forest fire smoke to content with, ect. I tried growing tomatoes but they would not take in the ground so this year I bought a plastic greenhouse (GH) which worked well except you have to babysit a GH. When the sun comes out it gets blazing hot inside so you have to open it up & get your fans running. When the sun then goes away, it gets cold & you have to close the greenhouse up & get your heater running. What a pain. SO, next week I am dumping my plants & moving the GH into my garage where all I will have to worry about is cold. I am buying grow lights (LED shop lights) this morning for that project. I will be starting tomato seeds in the GH in the garage for winter tomatoes. Wish me luck. !
I did heavy pruning in late Aug and just had to do it again this past week. I top it, remove all suckers, blossoms, and any foliage bow fruiting branches. I have had to continually keep plucking the suckers. I did build a cattle panel hoop over my San Marzanos and strung them to the top. This way I can put row cover overhead to shade them from the harsh sun, or wrap sides to protect from wind and hail, and now I am putting 2 layers over it for cooler nights. I am picking anything with dark blush to ripen indoors. If there are a lot of green tomatoes left before first frost, I just cut the branch and stick it in water to ripen in my sun room.
IDK my determinate plants are giving me so many plants, wow. Usually I plant indeterminate but this year I planted determinate and I am loving the harvest but I'll be glad when it's done since I am tired because I've had so many. I even did something you don't normally do, I cut of branches, topped them, and pruned them down to nothing, almost every other day. I did that when the fruit was still very small, cutting off suckers and any branches that were pointing down. They were so bushy they were going to get blight if I didn't do that because we've had so much rain. It worked and they are delicious paste varieties.
I grow tomatoes on my deck & they provide shade for us. I let them grow to the top of the cage & then I trim them regularly. It’s a good visual reminder for me.
For the last couple years i harvested thousands of tomatoes green , due to incoming frost , I set them out around my house and about 97% of them all ripened , this has become my new method of harvesting tomatoes. It's nice becouse you have ripe tomatoes to work with at different times. I dehydrate them and make tomatoe pesto. So good
Perfect timing on your video . I live in Massachusetts, and my tomato plants are about 6 feet in height now . They a leaning over , and bending the tomato cages . I have been looking at them for the last week, saying to myself. What am I going to do with theses things . Now I have a project for today. Thanks for the well timed tip 👍🏻
Thank you for this! Exactly what I did. Had the seeds, didn’t get them started in time, bought what tomato starts I could find at the feed store in late May. And I have growing blooming plants with green tomatoes. I’m going to go top them today, and hope for some ripe ones. Our growing season here is similar to yours. We can almost always count on a frost in September.
Procrastination has put me in a bad place with my tomatoes this year... If I make it to next year I'm planning on being much more attentive to my plants.... They deserve a better gardener than they got this year....
I just did this with my indeterminate varieties a week ago. Like you, I hate cutting off blossoms & young fruit but it's got to be done otherwise you'll end up with a lot of small green tomatoes at the end of the season.
The deer did my pruning for me this year, eating just the tops. The tomatoes have ripened the best ever, lol. Here in NS I always had lots of green tomatoes by frost (not that that’s a bad thing).
You're right about having a hard time choosing which plant goes and which one stays! They become like children after putting time into them...but 'kaysara,sara'.🤗🤠
In Colorado it might freeze in September it might freeze in November so I’m torn on if I should top. They already got a late start this year and I’d like a bigger crop
I am in NE Colorado plains and I do top mine 4-6 weeks before average first frost date. I also remove blossoms, suckers, thick leaves blocking airflow, and any branches below fruiting limbs. I have had to keep plucking suckers. This has really worked well for me. We are in a La Nina, warmer than usual, so our first frost will be late Oct this year where I live. Last year we had snow in late Sept. I grew San Marzano and they put on so much fruit, half are still green. Just pruned a second time and now I am plucking them as soon as they turn a little orange and let them ripen inside. This gives all the energy to the remaining green tomatoes. It's working!
Just discovered this EXCELLENT channel and just subscribed. I also get frost in late September or so (Zone 5b). Should I bring my tomato plants (indeterminate, Super Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes) now in pots outside, in to my garage during the snowy months or should I just let them die in the winter and plant new ones next spring, 2023?
Here in the southern Alberta foothills,I started hard pruning my tomato plants about 2 weeks ago and I think that might actually have been a week too late! The overnight temps are due to be single digit,so it’s a race to the finish. Hopefully I didn’t leave it too late. Thanks for this one,it is timely and might just get some gardeners out to their tomato plants in a hurry to start trimming! 👍👍👍
They weren't grown enough here at that point they were barely 2 feet high as I recall - my garden seems to be consistently behind yours. Anyway - you're the king where these tomatoes are concerned! Thanks for giving me that one :)
Greg! Thank you. I had to buy plants too. I drown my poor seedlings by poor drainage. I'm going right now to chop. Was wondering why my tomatoes weren't turning red. A 3b procrastinator.
You need to move south buddy ;). I always grow early girls which are indeterminate and I prune some suckers but usually let 4-6 stalks grow per plant so the don't get too tall too fast. I begin topping lightly in July and get more aggressive in August to the point I'm at now when I top everything I see once a week. I can usually go to mid October before a frost here and actually get a few big early girl plants in the ground May 1. This gives me a season of ripe tomatoes starting the end of June to end of Nov counting the green ones I pick in October and put in paper bags.
Enjoyed this video! Wish I’d known about this years ago!!!! This year I’m growing watermelons and decided to top them. Like you said, not enough time to finish growing all the 🍉 the blooms would turn into. So let it put that energy into existing 🍉. I wish I had thought of this sooner, because all the suckers from the main vines are all twisted together so I have to leave them alone unless I see nothing on that sucker. Thank you for sharing this information!
I'm curious what tomato variety you've had great luck with? I'm having a great tomato year just outside of Halifax, I've got both determinates and indeterminates and they are all doing great, started indoors in March and now I have them in 100 gallon grow bags with some other things interplanted. Learned a lot this year - was my first year really trying to grow from seed. Lot's of work but it's paying off nicely!
Awesome. Some varieties grow faster than others, and "just outside of halifax" can mean many things in terms of growing conditions. There are many days when it's 19c and foggy here, then I drive 15 minutes to bayers lake pak and its 30c and sunny. Anyway - whatever variety you grew - stick with that :)
Good video. I needed this reminder. We haven't had a meal of tomatoes yet (Eastern Ontario) but we've got loads of big green tomatoes on my indeterminate vines. Some have ripened but rotted before I could pick them. Maybe if I top them and allow more sunlight down into them they'll ripen better.
I'm north of 7, central Ontario not a great crop this year for us either. My best tomatoes are volunteers from the compost. We got snow on the 28th of May! It's still rewarding though and so much better then store bought.
Greg I agree, that gardener's sometimes procrastinate. 😞 Personally I am the king of gardening procrastination (work, kids , and life) Can you do a video on gardening schedules? I need a better way.
Question: Greg, when you use seaweed in your garden is it sea lettuce, sea grass, or that rubbery stuff that I don't know the name of? Is there a difference?
You can pick unripe tomatoes and ripen them off the plant. I have a relative in Russia and that seems to be what they do as they have a shorter growing season as well. I do it too and have tomatoes ripening in the kitchen well into winter.
What area are you in NS? I’m living in downtown Halifax. I live in an almost 20 story high-rise building, and am using my 5’ x 8’ balcony to grow tomato plants for the first time in my life this year. The majority of them are indeterminate, so I will have to do this. Thank you!
It's a question of whether you have red ones yet or not. I'm out near peggy's cove, so with the foggy summer days here it's very hard to grow some determinate varieties to maturity. If you are on the peninsula, I guarantee it's sunnier and warmer where you are. Anyway, if you have no red ones yet, top them :)
Sun, sun, sun is not always the best thing for plants. It really depends on the temperatures. We had a brutally hot summer - from the time of the heat dome in June until second week of August. My tomatoes basically just stopped flowering and producing fruit because it was so hot. Just saying.
I agree. In Perth Australia our main struggle is how to keep plants alive during long sustained periods of 35-low 40s anywhere between jan and March / it just kills everything if you don’t cover it - although completely different environment there is lots on this channel to take home I think
Your tomatoes look very healthy for this time of year. Do you spray some type of fungacide? Most gardens hear in southern new Hampshire have the lower half of plant all yellowed and dying back.
Hahahaha! I m at 20 secs and already I hear you're saying what I'm saying... STOP GROWING ALREADY! start fruiting! PLEEEEASE! I started cutting mine back as well..I pruned off the suckers and topped the apical growing tips, so that energy be used for fruit development. So any flowers, having actually showed the potential to bring out fruit, are left on the plant. Also added potassium sulphate
I have to say, I really, severely and whole-heartily dislike what you're doing. But file the information for future reference. And contributed with a like to the video. :)
Thanks! Guess what I'm now doing this weekend! I'm going to make wiser decisions for next summer now, but oh that Maritime Green Tomato Chow will be great too!
This is good advice, but you could've skipped the first 6 minutes of talking and got to the point of the video. Most of us already know what determinate and indeterminate tomatoes are!
It's about context - the distinction between indet vs det is the reason why topping is needeed in some climates . Here's a tip - if I, or anyone else is talking about something that you already know, ffd the video; that's what I do :)
@@maritimegardening4887 If I ffd a 16 minute video with 2 minutes of information, I might end up missing that 2 minutes. At 0:33 you ask the rhetorical question "why would you top your tomato plants?" and I was waiting for an immediate answer but you instantly changed the subject to ind vs det tomatoes. I poked around the video a bit and still couldn't find your answer of why topping tomatoes is important. That should have been the very first thing you said in the video.
On the Pacific coast we get intermittent sun alot. Clouds roll in, the fog rolls in, lots of rainy days, last couple of seasons we have had forest fire smoke to content with, ect. I tried growing tomatoes but they would not take in the ground so this year I bought a plastic greenhouse (GH) which worked well except you have to babysit a GH. When the sun comes out it gets blazing hot inside so you have to open it up & get your fans running. When the sun then goes away, it gets cold & you have to close the greenhouse up & get your heater running. What a pain. SO, next week I am dumping my plants & moving the GH into my garage where all I will have to worry about is cold. I am buying grow lights (LED shop lights) this morning for that project. I will be starting tomato seeds in the GH in the garage for winter tomatoes. Wish me luck.
!
I did heavy pruning in late Aug and just had to do it again this past week. I top it, remove all suckers, blossoms, and any foliage bow fruiting branches. I have had to continually keep plucking the suckers.
I did build a cattle panel hoop over my San Marzanos and strung them to the top. This way I can put row cover overhead to shade them from the harsh sun, or wrap sides to protect from wind and hail, and now I am putting 2 layers over it for cooler nights.
I am picking anything with dark blush to ripen indoors. If there are a lot of green tomatoes left before first frost, I just cut the branch and stick it in water to ripen in my sun room.
IDK my determinate plants are giving me so many plants, wow. Usually I plant indeterminate but this year I planted determinate and I am loving the harvest but I'll be glad when it's done since I am tired because I've had so many. I even did something you don't normally do, I cut of branches, topped them, and pruned them down to nothing, almost every other day. I did that when the fruit was still very small, cutting off suckers and any branches that were pointing down. They were so bushy they were going to get blight if I didn't do that because we've had so much rain. It worked and they are delicious paste varieties.
I do this every season and also defoliate heavily as the direct sun will help fruit ripen more quickly...
I grow tomatoes on my deck & they provide shade for us. I let them grow to the top of the cage & then I trim them regularly. It’s a good visual reminder for me.
For the last couple years i harvested thousands of tomatoes green , due to incoming frost , I set them out around my house and about 97% of them all ripened , this has become my new method of harvesting tomatoes. It's nice becouse you have ripe tomatoes to work with at different times. I dehydrate them and make tomatoe pesto. So good
Tomato pesto?? 🤔
Thanks. I'll give that a try.
Perfect timing on your video . I live in Massachusetts, and my tomato plants are about 6 feet in height now . They a leaning over , and bending the tomato cages . I have been looking at them for the last week, saying to myself. What am I going to do with theses things . Now I have a project for today. Thanks for the well timed tip 👍🏻
That is awesome!
Thanks for the remainder much appreciated
Thank you for this! Exactly what I did. Had the seeds, didn’t get them started in time, bought what tomato starts I could find at the feed store in late May. And I have growing blooming plants with green tomatoes. I’m going to go top them today, and hope for some ripe ones. Our growing season here is similar to yours. We can almost always count on a frost in September.
This time of year, if the branch doesn't have any fruit set on them, I cut it off. You gotta do what you gotta do.
Procrastination has put me in a bad place with my tomatoes this year... If I make it to next year I'm planning on being much more attentive to my plants.... They deserve a better gardener than they got this year....
There's always next year :)
I was looking at my tomatoes yesterday and pondering their size.
I just did this with my indeterminate varieties a week ago. Like you, I hate cutting off blossoms & young fruit but it's got to be done otherwise you'll end up with a lot of small green tomatoes at the end of the season.
The deer did my pruning for me this year, eating just the tops. The tomatoes have ripened the best ever, lol. Here in NS I always had lots of green tomatoes by frost (not that that’s a bad thing).
You're right about having a hard time choosing which plant goes and which one stays! They become like children after putting time into them...but 'kaysara,sara'.🤗🤠
Exactly!!
You are right. I have to be tougher. Thanks.
I get satisfaction from pruning and snipping away. It means there is something there to cut haha
In Colorado it might freeze in September it might freeze in November so I’m torn on if I should top. They already got a late start this year and I’d like a bigger crop
I am in NE Colorado plains and I do top mine 4-6 weeks before average first frost date. I also remove blossoms, suckers, thick leaves blocking airflow, and any branches below fruiting limbs. I have had to keep plucking suckers. This has really worked well for me. We are in a La Nina, warmer than usual, so our first frost will be late Oct this year where I live. Last year we had snow in late Sept.
I grew San Marzano and they put on so much fruit, half are still green. Just pruned a second time and now I am plucking them as soon as they turn a little orange and let them ripen inside. This gives all the energy to the remaining green tomatoes. It's working!
Just discovered this EXCELLENT channel and just subscribed. I also get frost in late September or so (Zone 5b). Should I bring my tomato plants (indeterminate, Super Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes) now in pots outside, in to my garage during the snowy months or should I just let them die in the winter and plant new ones next spring, 2023?
Thanks for subbing! Just leave them out, and when there's a risk of frost cut them off at the bottom and hang them upside down indoors.
Here in the southern Alberta foothills,I started hard pruning my tomato plants about 2 weeks ago and I think that might actually have been a week too late! The overnight temps are due to be single digit,so it’s a race to the finish. Hopefully I didn’t leave it too late. Thanks for this one,it is timely and might just get some gardeners out to their tomato plants in a hurry to start trimming! 👍👍👍
😂 Who knew Dirty Harry had wise gardening advice! I'm going to remember that...thanks, Greg. Oh...and I topped them last week 👍
i am in the same zone you are i top my tomato end of july now i have lots of ripe tomato you are little late topping them
They weren't grown enough here at that point they were barely 2 feet high as I recall - my garden seems to be consistently behind yours. Anyway - you're the king where these tomatoes are concerned! Thanks for giving me that one :)
I topped my indeterminate tomatoes just the other day. Next year I’ll include some determinate tomatoes, probably Scotia, which I used to grow.
There's a lot of new varieties. Scotias are great but there are many other options as well - and some are more vigorous and disease resistant.
Greg! Thank you. I had to buy plants too. I drown my poor seedlings by poor drainage. I'm going right now to chop. Was wondering why my tomatoes weren't turning red. A 3b procrastinator.
Go for it!
You need to move south buddy ;). I always grow early girls which are indeterminate and I prune some suckers but usually let 4-6 stalks grow per plant so the don't get too tall too fast. I begin topping lightly in July and get more aggressive in August to the point I'm at now when I top everything I see once a week. I can usually go to mid October before a frost here and actually get a few big early girl plants in the ground May 1. This gives me a season of ripe tomatoes starting the end of June to end of Nov counting the green ones I pick in October and put in paper bags.
Enjoyed this video! Wish I’d known about this years ago!!!! This year I’m growing watermelons and decided to top them. Like you said, not enough time to finish growing all the 🍉 the blooms would turn into. So let it put that energy into existing 🍉. I wish I had thought of this sooner, because all the suckers from the main vines are all twisted together so I have to leave them alone unless I see nothing on that sucker. Thank you for sharing this information!
I'm curious what tomato variety you've had great luck with? I'm having a great tomato year just outside of Halifax, I've got both determinates and indeterminates and they are all doing great, started indoors in March and now I have them in 100 gallon grow bags with some other things interplanted. Learned a lot this year - was my first year really trying to grow from seed. Lot's of work but it's paying off nicely!
Awesome. Some varieties grow faster than others, and "just outside of halifax" can mean many things in terms of growing conditions. There are many days when it's 19c and foggy here, then I drive 15 minutes to bayers lake pak and its 30c and sunny. Anyway - whatever variety you grew - stick with that :)
Good video. I needed this reminder. We haven't had a meal of tomatoes yet (Eastern Ontario) but we've got loads of big green tomatoes on my indeterminate vines. Some have ripened but rotted before I could pick them. Maybe if I top them and allow more sunlight down into them they'll ripen better.
I'm north of 7, central Ontario not a great crop this year for us either. My best tomatoes are volunteers from the compost. We got snow on the 28th of May! It's still rewarding though and so much better then store bought.
Here's hoping!
Lol , now I’m picturing Clint Eastwood giving you gardening advice.
Greg I agree, that gardener's sometimes procrastinate. 😞 Personally I am the king of gardening procrastination (work, kids , and life) Can you do a video on gardening schedules? I need a better way.
that's a good idea - i've added it to my list :)
Question: Greg, when you use seaweed in your garden is it sea lettuce, sea grass, or that rubbery stuff that I don't know the name of? Is there a difference?
I use whatever washes up on the beach, there's all kinds of different stuff in there usually
You can pick unripe tomatoes and ripen them off the plant. I have a relative in Russia and that seems to be what they do as they have a shorter growing season as well. I do it too and have tomatoes ripening in the kitchen well into winter.
my inlaws would take the whole plant and hang it by the roots upside down in their little greenhouse.
What area are you in NS? I’m living in downtown Halifax. I live in an almost 20 story high-rise building, and am using my 5’ x 8’ balcony to grow tomato plants for the first time in my life this year. The majority of them are indeterminate, so I will have to do this. Thank you!
It's a question of whether you have red ones yet or not. I'm out near peggy's cove, so with the foggy summer days here it's very hard to grow some determinate varieties to maturity. If you are on the peninsula, I guarantee it's sunnier and warmer where you are. Anyway, if you have no red ones yet, top them :)
so is it best to also prune suckers when you’re topping your tomatoes?? I’ve heard different takes on this and i’m still not sure
If you are topping them then yes, it makes sense to prune the suckers.
I've always just pinched the blossoms and allowed the rest of the plant to grow. Is there an advantage to your method?
both new blossoms and new vegetation draw energy from the plant. Your method + my method is ideal.
Sun, sun, sun is not always the best thing for plants. It really depends on the temperatures. We had a brutally hot summer - from the time of the heat dome in June until second week of August. My tomatoes basically just stopped flowering and producing fruit because it was so hot. Just saying.
I agree. In Perth Australia our main struggle is how to keep plants alive during long sustained periods of 35-low 40s anywhere between jan and March / it just kills everything if you don’t cover it - although completely different environment there is lots on this channel to take home I think
Would you do that to a watermelon plant? I have a very long watermelon plant with tons of flowers but no sign of fruit....
I don't know - I can't grow them here without a lot of TLC so it's hard to say what I'd do.
Another Dirty Harry quote that might apply to the people who want to risk making it past an early frost... "Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya' punk?"
Your tomatoes look very healthy for this time of year. Do you spray some type of fungacide? Most gardens hear in southern new Hampshire have the lower half of plant all yellowed and dying back.
No that's just the way they grew. A key thing is to keep the branches off the ground. Drat! I should have done a video on that a month ago
Hahahaha! I m at 20 secs and already I hear you're saying what I'm saying... STOP GROWING ALREADY! start fruiting! PLEEEEASE!
I started cutting mine back as well..I pruned off the suckers and topped the apical growing tips, so that energy be used for fruit development. So any flowers, having actually showed the potential to bring out fruit, are left on the plant. Also added potassium sulphate
Ya I should go out with the knife and start cutting at least some tops.Like you say its tough to do it...lol
I like the indeterminate tomatoes but I too am cutting back on them....
But I’m not ready for summer to be over 😭. Off to prune and face reality ...
I feel your pain :)
👍🏼😉
I have to say, I really, severely and whole-heartily dislike what you're doing. But file the information for future reference. And contributed with a like to the video. :)
What is it that you don't like? A comment like this is not constructive - you've given me nothing to consider.
@@maritimegardening4887 - ok - so, what you were doing in the video - was "topping" the tomatoes. I really disliked that part :)
@@maritimegardening4887 - ok, so yesterday I did exactly that - topped off all of my tomatoes... Still disliked it a lot :)
Thanks! Guess what I'm now doing this weekend! I'm going to make wiser decisions for next summer now, but oh that Maritime Green Tomato Chow will be great too!
The
This is good advice, but you could've skipped the first 6 minutes of talking and got to the point of the video. Most of us already know what determinate and indeterminate tomatoes are!
It's about context - the distinction between indet vs det is the reason why topping is needeed in some climates . Here's a tip - if I, or anyone else is talking about something that you already know, ffd the video; that's what I do :)
@@maritimegardening4887 If I ffd a 16 minute video with 2 minutes of information, I might end up missing that 2 minutes. At 0:33 you ask the rhetorical question "why would you top your tomato plants?" and I was waiting for an immediate answer but you instantly changed the subject to ind vs det tomatoes. I poked around the video a bit and still couldn't find your answer of why topping tomatoes is important. That should have been the very first thing you said in the video.