This is my first year growing tomatoes. I am growing all indeterminate plants - beefsteak, sparta, and sweet million. I was warned to cut off what in French we call "gourmands", extra shoots that grow between the main leafs and the "trunk" of the plant, and have done so. Now. It seems that all of my plants have grown one other shoot from the very base. This one grows literally like a second plant, its leaves have extra shoots themselves and they are now sprouting flowers. My question is: is this second plant-like shoot another "gourmand"? Should I eliminate it like I did all the others? Will it undermine the growth of my main branch's fruit? Or should I just keep it this way and be happy that my plants are healthy enough to produce two branches with fruit?
I always leave the gourmands and the secondary shoot as well - I find that it triples my production. However, I have the advantage of tropical conditions. Personally? I'd leave the base sprout. It will grow more slowly than your main vine, and provide you with more fruit later on in the season. In the case of the Sweet Million, you'll almost double the plant's production by leaving the base sprout on; with the Beefsteak and Sparta you'll see about another 25-30% more fruit.
Thanks for your reply! You mention a tropical climate... in my case, I'm in Montreal and the climate gets cold early. My plants have only just started producing flowers, I have maybe 4 or 5 tiny green fruit on a total of about 15 plants. I think I might keep these sprouts on the plants that matured quicker and eliminate them on the ones that germinated later and are still small. What do you think? Also, when I transplanted my plants into containers I forgot to transfer the identification with them! So now I don't know which plant is which... ha. I guess I'll see when they bear fruit... Any way to recognize these three types of tomatoes from their foliage?
Sounds like a plan to me - the more vigorous plants will easily support the additional vines and flowers, and the slower ones will do better with less competition. Besides, Montreal has an extra long summer compared to Edmonton (where I learned tomatoes)! I have absolutely no idea how to tell unlabeled plants apart until they start blooming. The Sweet Million will put out zillions of flowers all at once, and the Beefsteak will have double or triple flowers. That leaves the Sparta, which will look "typical" when it blooms.
A quibble, perhaps... but Edmonton will have more daylight hours than Montreal over the course of the summer. From May through September: Edmonton, 1325.6 sunshine hours, Montreal, 1164.6 sunshine hours. That said, Montreal is 2-3 degrees C warmer than Edmonton over that span of time. A very rough calculation of averaging the average daily temps (over the span of each month) * the number of sunshine hours gives Montreal a very slight edge over Edmonton (~ 5%) for a quick-and-dirty heat-units calculation. Many flaws with this (e.g., are sunshine hours proportional to daylight hours? are the longer daylight hours in the growing season more or less important?), so take this idea with a grain of salt.
Well, the thing is, I'm more worried about too much heat quickly than not enough. My plants are on a garage top in containers. In my experience my plants tend to cook through in these conditions. This year I put them on wooden pallets so that there can be some air circulation between the pots and the radiating heat from the gravel and tar that the roof is made of. I can't get cilantro to sprout more than 3 tiny leaves before going to seed. They have no shadow whatsoever and they get all hours of sunlight in the day. I just hope they survive the july/august heat...
Daniel - I did not know that! Thanks - I'd assumed that since Edmonton is quite a bit more northerly than Montreal, our daylight would be less in total. If the pots they're in aren't too huge, Marlique, maybe try putting them inside of larger pots (enough larger that there's an airspace between the outer and inner pots - this provides a bit of insulation and can help keep them from getting roasted.
Oh, great advice! I actually acquired four very big clay pots lately, but it was too late in the season for me to put anything in them really, so I thought I'd use them next season. I'll put some of my smaller containers in them then. Some of my plants are in clay pots, some are in thin black plastic containers. Which ones do you think could use the insulation the most? (So many questions!)
Probably the black plastic ones - they're darker and therefore will be attracting more heat than the clay.
