Tomato Pickling

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Is it necessary to pinch tomatoes? Communicating with many familiar gardeners, gardeners, I realized that not everyone is doing pinching. And not because they do not know about him. Many are simply sorry to take and just remove the shoots: but they will bloom and the harvest will be greater! And they do not even imagine how they are mistaken

Earlier, I was also mistaken, until my friend passed the tomatoes in two rows for me, for the purity of the experiment - through the bush. That is, the bush stepson, the bush leaves it to me, and I do with it what I want. Result: on bushes with removed stepsons, the harvest was better, the tomatoes were larger. In addition, fruits ripened faster on pricked bushes. Let's start by considering the question: what is pinning?

What are stepchildren and pinching?

Stepsons are additional shoots (shoots) that grow from the axils of the leaves of a tomato (tomato) bush. In order not to be confused with the bifurcation of the crown, I want to clarify that stepchildren grow only from the leaf axils and never appear on a bare trunk, that is, first a leaf appears - and after a while a shoot.

Stepsonizing is the removal of this very process-stepson. When pinching, only the extra shoot is removed, the leaf itself does not need to be removed.

Why do you need to pinch?

We carefully examine our tomato bushes for the presence of stepchildren. If they have already appeared (even if the processes are already large and have thrown out the buds!) Proceed to their removal. Do not regret, because you need a tomato harvest, and not a simple landscaping of the site. After all, if you leave these lateral processes, then they will draw in nutrients, and after all, their stepchildren appear on these processes too! Can you imagine how much the bush has to "feed" the extra twigs? Accordingly, there may be more tomatoes themselves due to the number of branches, but they will be smaller.

In addition, light is very important for the plant. And because of the many processes, the bush thickens and there is not enough light. Lack of light and poor ventilation very often leads to a rather dangerous and unpleasant disease of tomato bushes - late blight.

How to properly pinch tomatoes?

There is nothing complicated in the procedure itself. To begin with, let's decide how many stems we will "lead" the tomato bush. Do not leave more than 3 pieces, otherwise there will be no sense from our tomatoes. It is best, of course, to leave 1 main stem, but if you want to make 2-3 stems, then pay attention to the fact that you need to leave the very first stepson under the flower brush, and for the third stem, the stepson is left even lower, more powerful and strong. The rest of the shoots, including those that have grown on the left stepchildren, are ruthlessly removed, otherwise we will again get green mass instead of the expected harvest.

Now we start the process itself

The stepchildren simply break off, do not cut off, but break out. Do not be afraid, the bush will not die or be damaged from this. There are 2 options for breaking out:

1. When the stepson's stems are broken off, a small "stump" 1-2 centimeters long remains. It is believed that this inhibits the emergence of new processes in the same place.

2. The process breaks off completely, the stem remains smooth, but with foliage. By the way, some of the lower leaves can also be removed, their presence or absence is not important in this case. Just do not overdo it, the bush should not "go bald".

I personally use the second method, I don't like it when extra sticks stick out on the bush. Firstly, it is ugly and unaesthetic, and secondly, I cling to them all the time, especially when I tie up tomatoes. So I clean it up. Sometimes even with lower leaves.