The growth of my greenhouse tomato plants is prolific, however the fruit production is low and many flowers just fall off the plant. I first had a few screened sections to hopefully let bees in. This weekend, I removed all glass panels on the front section. What can I do to get more fruit?
You could try hand pollinating by shaking the flowers periodically. Commercial growers sometimes use electric vibrators to improve pollination in greenhouses, but bumblebees are also used. For a small greenhouse shaking should be adequate.
This thread Buzz pollination for coffee blossoms? | UBC Botanical Garden Forums on buzz pollination may be of interest.
Also remove all of the lower foliage (below the first set of blooms), these large branchlets only deter from developing large and abundant fruit set. And continue to prune these "leaves" over the course of the growing season… for a visual...imagine having just leaves at the very top of the plant, and a long bare stock with the fruit below…. see Windset in Ladner......
Pruning Tomatoes is a matter of personal preference. I have never seen more abundant and better quality tomato crop than in this (unpruned) garden: http://kootenaygardening.com/garden_vegetable_heirloom.htm
I agree with Sundrop. I only prune off the leaves that are below the lowest fruiting spur with unripe tomatoes, my reasoning being that the more leaves on the plant, the more sugar produced by photosynthesis for fruit ripening. This tactic always yields a good crop, although I haven't tried anything scientific, like a side-by-side comparison with pruned plants. I only do this limited pruning for staked tomatoes. The indeterminate ones in cages are not pruned at all.
