Large Plants-Lotsa Flowers-all aborting

[keithaxis]

A little background on what is going on with the plants and area..Zone 4/5 with Memorial day weekend beign the time I put out plants after starting from seed in greenhouse 9 weeks earlier. We had a terrible 3 weeks of rain and mist right after transplant. But since around June 20 we have had mostly sunny weather in 70's and 80's...The plants are all real full and lush looking and growing in brand new soil I had delivered that is called two-way (compost and sand). The soil appears great and I have used the same delivered soil this year for many peppers and they all have fruit..

The plants as you can see below in pic are healthy with many floweres but they abort almost at a 100% rate. Is this just a normal thing for them (you ask which type? brandywine suddath, brandywine OTV, AuntRubyGermanGreen, Cuostrolee, Kelloggs Breakfast, Box Car willie, Dr Wyche's, etc...30 different varieties most of the late season) at the first stage of blooming? Basically I have been seeing incredible flowers for a couple weeks but it took until this week to finally see one set ARGG and one Russian 117 but all other flowers just abort after they try and make tomato..I pulled a double bloom off of a suddath yesterday as I could see the yellow abort beginnnig..inside was a double suddath about the size of a pea..but still not hanging on to plant...

Does anyone else on the site put there plants in ground around memorial day? if so what stage are your plants at as far as fruit production...

I can say the all my smaller cherry types and ping pong ball types have fruit but they are in half whiskey barrels so I cannot compare to the ground grown larger tomatoes...and I think those smaller ones always fruit earlier and easier...

The view you are seeing is facing south so these plants get 10 hours of sun each day, much more once the sun goes further south and it will be basically 12 hours of sun a day...plants that are not cherries are all in 2'x8' foot beds (two plants per bed) and 5 plants in a 8'x8' bed..





Brandywine Suddath-front left...yellow brandywine behind white table...


Yellow Pear to Right..Russian 117 to left

[dcarch]

keithaxis

You have a nice garden. Sorry to hear that you have not much luck with fruit set.

Have you tried hand pollinate the blossoms?
Have you tried BlossomSet spray?

dcarch

[feldon30]

Very nice setup and healthy-looking plants. Looking at wunderground.com, your daily highs are 75 and daily lows are 48-52, sound right?

Might borrow an electric toothbrush and vibrate each blossom cluster's stem. Or "flick" it with your finger.

Lots of people try to use Blossom Set spray when it's hot (for which it wasn't designed), but for moderate temperatures, who knows. Waiting for tomato experts to chip in...

[nancysil]

I planted out on Memorial Day. All my tomato plants had early blossoms, but the varieties listed as "late"had blossoms that aborted. So I think this is normal and it is the reason that they are "late" varieties. They have early blossoms but late fruit set.

I am a very dedicated blossom buzzer - out there daily with my little vibrating chopstick gizmo that really targets those blossoms. I think this activity helps fruit set, but it hasn't made a difference on the late varieties. They are all just about a week ago starting to set fruit.

[keithaxis]

last night i was pulling off the aborted flowers and when I open up I can see the tomato about the size of a pellet or larger. Does that me that they are getting pollinized? or is it similar to a pumpkin that starts to grow and then dies off? I 'lll try the old electric toothbrush this weekend and hope for more wind..we really have had no wind for a month either, cause if we ever did I would have a lot of work to do with branches that would have got knocked all over...

Here is a better view of what I have going on from different angle...this was july 4th...


Mt Rainier behind garden.

[feldon30]

*wipes a tear*

Keith... beautiful!

Pretty sure once it's past the size of dime, it's the real deal.