strange albino cave tomatoes

[veratrine]

This morning, I was out communing with the garden and wondering why none of my tomatoes is ripe when I'm eating squash, corn, peppers, etc, from the garden. In fact, I noticed, the tomato plants have a few yellowing leaves, which is depressing when you haven't consumed a single tomato and it's July. So I thought I might snip off a couple of the droopier branches.

As with all my pruning, I got a little over-excited and soon I had a huge pile of branches, and for the first time in months, I could see into the interior of the tomato bushes (5 1/2 feet high, 4 feet wide, and dense). What's in there isn't pretty--droopy brown leaves, little tiny black buggies, and ALBINO tomatoes. Seriously. They're so white, they almost glow in the dark.

So, here's my question: Do the tomato fruits require sun to ripen, or will they turn red even in total shade (like the interior of my plants). And should I a) prune the plants so the interiors get sun or b) cut off the tomatoes growing deep inside or c) a little of both? (I know my plants sound like they should be razed to the ground, but the outsides of the bushes are quite healthy--it's just the insides that are scary.)

[bcday]

What varieties did you plant? Some take longer to ripen than others.

When did you plant them? The Days to Maturity is only a very rough guideline, but if the DTM says 80 days and it's only been 60 since you planted them, it's too soon to worry.

Tomato fruits do not need to be in the sun to ripen. In fact, they can get sun scald if there isn't enough foliage to shade them from very hot sun.

I don't think you need to remove any tomatoes, or prune off any leaves except dead/diseased ones.

Patience, the tomatoes will ripen when they're ready.

[veratrine]

Thanks for the answer! This year, I've got Celebrity and Pineapple, and I planted them around the beginning of May. I know those are both big varieties, so I expected them to take a while, but they're much slower than I imagined they would be.

Before joining this forum, I actually didn't know that tomatoes need pruning--I just stuck them in wherever, and let them do their thing. But no previous tomato plants have ever grown into the monsters that these have become! The plants are so huge that my step-mother-in-law, standing right in front of them said "where are your tomatoes?" I told her she was looking at them, and she said "I thought those were shrubs!"

What is the goal of pruning? Just keeping leaves off the ground? Air circulation? So you can spray for bugs more effectively?

[Warren]

PICTURES!!!! please add pics

[dice]

"What is the goal of pruning?"

Big fruit, less fungal disease, easier to harvest,
less horizontal space used per plant.

"Just keeping leaves off the ground?"

One really good thing to do. I prune branches and
leaves closest to the ground even if I am letting
the rest of the plant grow as many branches as it
wants to.

"Air circulation?"

That helps in humid climates and anytime there are
leaf blights among the plants.

"So you can spray for bugs more effectively?"

People still do this? Commercial growers, sure,
but I would personally rather toss the plant than
have to spray bug killer on it. (I have religious
objections to trying to maintain plants that have
to be sprayed all of the time to stay healthy. I dislike
hybrid tea roses, for example, for just that reason.
The flowers look nice, but around here they are fungus
magnets.)

I know lots of tomato growers use daconil, a fungal
preventive spray, because in their climates the plants
would rapidly succumb to leaf diseases without it.
But I don't. A plant either produces mature tomatoes
without spraying or I am not growing it again.

There is some disagreement about whether pruning
is necessary in general. Some people insist that they
get better production and bigger, better fruit if they
cut an indeterminate plant back to just a few main
stems. This is standard practice in commercial
greenhouse tomato culture, and some farmers do it
in their field rows, too. Other people insist that the
plants need all of the leaves that they can produce
to achieve maximum production, and that their
harvested fruit size has not seemed to suffer from
lack of pruning.

Which way is better might vary with the space available,
who is harvesting, eating, or buying the fruit, growth
habits of specific cultivars, etc. Growers of trophy-sized
fruit often insist that you have to cut it back to one
main stem and just a few trusses to get football-sized
tomatoes. But is that really what you want?

Looking at my hedgelike rows, though, I admit that
being able to actually get at them without a machete
may have some practical benefits irregardless of
what effects pruning has on total production.

[veratrine]

On spraying for bugs...yeah, I do. I guess I haven't yet been convinced by the organic movement that I shouldn't. The tomatoes, for instance, I spray with pyrethrins. This is an organic molecule, found in chrysanthemums, I think, but it's still a pesticide.

But why shouldn't I use it? It probably does kill good bugs, but I spray when the bees don't seem to be active. It can also poison aquatic life, but I live 5 miles from the nearest body of water and there's zero run-off, so I don't think I'm very likely to be doing damage there. They may also possibly be carcinogenic, but given the area I live and what I breathe, I'm not going to tear my hair out over a possible threat.

[dice]

I dislike both the thought of spraying something
toxic on vegetables that I intend to eat and
the simple annoyance of having to do it.

I would much rather find crop cultivars that don't
need it, promote beneficial predator insects that
eat annoying bugs, find companion plants that
annoying bugs dislike (basil, garlic, and parsley
are all good for this, each for different reasons),
plant companion plants that are toxic to annoying
bugs when they eat them (Brazil 4 O'clocks), plant
trap crops that annoying bugs will eat instead,
and so on.

Do whatever you feel comfortable with.

Pyrethrum is better than most. At least
you know that what washes off is not
going to persist in the soil indefinitely.

Pretty good article on pruning:

http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/pages/g00031.asp

[elkwc36]

Veratrine,
I hadn't used any insect sprays on tomatoes till this year. I've use a pyrethrin spray on some. It has helped. I haven't used it on all but had lost over 20 plants before I started used it. I guess for me it is better to spray a few and have a harvest than no harvest at all. I tried to buy bugs but would of had to order them and by the time they would of arrived I figured I would lose several more. So decided to spot spray the ones I felt needed it the most. Each person has to make up their own mind. Jay

[dice]

" Each person has to make up their own mind."

Right. Each person's situation is a little different,
though there are common trends in particular
areas.

Something ate all of my zucchini sprouts this year.
I put iron-phosphate based slug and snail bait around
them. That may have helped, but that didn't kill
what ate them. I sprayed neem oil on them (deters
a lot of kinds of flying insects). No effect. I put a metal
collar around them to keep out cutworms. That wasn't it.

It may have been earwigs, but the zucchini are beyond
help now, so that is something to attack next year.

The only thing I ever saw nearby was a fast-moving
bug on the ground making for the cover of a raspberry
patch, and it disappeared too quickly to identify it.
(It was not an earwig, but then I do not know
whether it was fleeing the much-chewed zucchini
plant that I was approaching or if that was only
coincidence.)

I grew zucchini last year in a different spot, and
nothing bothered them at all, so I will probably
try that again before I have to make a tough
choice between bug spray and no zucchini.

[dice]

PS:

This intolerance of bug sprays all started one
year when I bought this beautiful, healthy, royal
blue lupine plant and put it out by the sidewalk.

A month later, the top foot of it was covered with
aphids. I sprayed with insecticidal soap, which
seemed to help, but two weeks later they were
back. I sprayed again, and the same thing happened.

The third time, I ripped it out, tossed it in the recycle
bin, and resolved not to grow things that required that
I spray them for bugs, fungi, etc. There are too many
other things to grow that don't need that crutch to
survive, look good, produce tasty food, etc.

My tomatoes have not had bug problems, so I guess
that is a luxury that not everyone has with regard
to that particular crop.