TOMATO HELP! please...
Darn Beefsteak won’t grow up- it just keeps getting denser.
It’s TOO small and bushy: about a foot high and a foot across.
Brought home from the store and planted it about three weeks ago.
Had a couple cold nights that may have stunted it- other than that I’ve no idea.
Can I prune the heck out of it? Like whack off half the branches?
Do nothing?
Help...
My tomatoes and peppers are doing great, but my radishes are all tops.
The radishes have been in for 30 days. They’ve produced exactly two dinner candidates...
Do nothing,
I grow over a 1000 tomato plants each year and 100 of them are beefsteaks. Beefsteaks are slow growing, and do not bare for about 90 to 100 days. I have had my beefsteaks in the dirt since April 1st and they are about 2 foot tall and wide. My early girls planted the same time are 6 feet tall and have tomatoes starting to turn red. keep the fertilizer to them (minus nitrogen) and you will be rewarded with many 2lb plus tomatoes.
Is it possible the plant was marked incorrectly? We brought home seedlings one time that were supposed to be cantaloupe and we got a lovely crop of okra.
You could prune it. Sometimes the tip of the tomato plant is damaged or broken off, and I guess that could cause it to be stunted.
If you take all except about 3 leaves off the branches you trim off and bury the nodules they will form roots at the nodules and you will have some additional plants to grow. I have also done this by putting the branch in water.
A lot of people like to trim off the “suckers” - little starts of branches in between two other branches.
PS. Doing nothing is a great option.
You can and should remove sucker growth
Best to wait until you see some blooms to determine which is productive for fruit , and which are suckers.
You can train it into an upright growth ( known in horticulture as 'apical meristem' - just select which is likely to grow upward, and trim out the rest
and eliminate the competition for leader.