Giant blossom clusters

[Tomatovator]

I have 2 Brandy Boy plants in this year. Both have blossom clusters that are at least 8" long and have over 20 flowers on them (in one cluster). They have several other clusters as well with 8 to 12 flowers. Both my Polish and Marianna's Peace have blossom clusters about 8" long with 15 or so flowers on them (in one cluster). I wasn't expecting so many flowers on these varieties with large fruits. Anyone else noticing this this year? It will be interesting to see how many tomatoes I get from one of these large clusters.

[feldon30]

A Brandy Boy with a truss of 20 fruit sounds highly unlikely. Any chance it's a different plant? Even when I'm fully awake and paying attention, I've dropped the wrong seed in the wrong hole before I realized it.

[the999bbq]

well the same with me on my 'citron russe' :


http://aycu15.webshots.com/image/176...1142915_rs.jpg

This is one cluster and I didn't even try to count the number of flowers on this plant - it is a 'normal' sized tomato however...
I was planning to open a similar thread so I co-operate on this one : what do we do with large numbers of flowers : let nature do what nature does best or do you have to prune to get them to mature.

personnally I am curious how this plant will react on this 'configuration' or is this normal ?

[feldon30]

I was really blown away when I got 8 Jet Stars on one truss, and they were all good! But 20?

Black Cherry is giving me huge V-trusses with 8-12 fruit per truss.

[Tomatovator]

Morgan
I'm 99% sure they are the correct varieties. All of them except the Polish were from new commercial seed packs and the plant leaves and lower fruits look right. Here are some Pics. The tallest plant in the middle is Marianna's Peace. To its left in a Brandy Boy and to its right is a Polish. I also took some close ups of the Giant blossom cluster on one of the Brandy Boys. It may be hard to see but after the stem split into a "V" the left fork of it turned into one giant cluster of blossoms. Most but not all of the blossoms are visible in the pics. The last 2 pics are of the lower fruits. PS... Did I damage that one tomato by pulling at the flower when it was small or it it from a pest of some sort.

[Vince]

Tomatovator,

All three of my Brandyboys have had some flower clusters with 20-30 flowers. Only a fraction of those developed into fruits.

Vince

[QAGuy]

I've got a 'Mr Stripey' (maybe p it may also be a Tigerella) that has huge trusses also.

See?

[QAGuy]

And this sweet 100 isn't doing badly either.

[the999bbq]

should we (all) let them all grow or should we prune back to say 8 tomatoes - that's the question that keeps bugging me ?
It might be spectacular to have 50 or more tomatoes but not if they can't get any bigger than a cherry tomato... (when they are not cherry tomatoes that is)

[Tomatovator]

I was wondering the same thing about snipping some of the flowers off but I haven't. I'm hoping that the best candidates to produce fruit will do so naturally and the rest will just drop on their own???

[mathfed]

On the plants I have that have a lot of greenies, I plan to let them be and cull them out as they get bigger. If there are some that get BER, heavy catfacing, or split badly, those will get culled. I don't want to cull any when they are small, though, in case I end up tossing what would eventually be really nice toms.

[sirtanon]

I agree.. why reduce your plant's overall yield or run the risk of it getting sick early on and not yielding much?

Leave them all be, and enjoy the fruits for your labor!

[gardenpaws_VA]

I've got smaller clusters, on a couple of the dwarfs, but I've been wondering if I'll end up with misshapen fruit due to crowding (and possibly not as much size as they could attain). These are clusters of 5 or so, arranged in a ring rather than a V, and at 2+ inches per very green tomato, it's getting pretty cosy in there!