Gardening with Allen: Help tomato plants set fruit (2024)

FAQs

Gardening with Allen: Help tomato plants set fruit? ›

Another way to improve fruit set is to trick the flowers into thinking they have been successfully pollinated. If sprayed with a hormone available in a product called “tomato blossom set” tomato flowers often set without pollination. The artificial hormone produces the same effect as pollination.

If you're faced with tomato plants not setting fruit, the best thing to do is to keep the plants healthy and fertilized with plant food, such as Miracle-Gro® Shake 'n Feed® Tomato, Fruit & Vegetable Plant Food. The plants will start to produce again when the weather becomes favorable.

Be Mindful of Outdoor Temperatures

Typically, you can begin hardening off your tomato plants 2 to 3 weeks prior to when the overnight temperatures are projected to be consistently above 13 ° C (55 ° F) for your region. Until then, continue to bring them indoors every night.

Sunlight gives your tomato plants the energy to produce fruit, so if your plant doesn't have enough sunlight, you're less likely to see tomatoes fruiting. To increase sunlight, try: Moving your potted plant – If you have a potted tomato plant, try moving it to a sunnier location.

Try to remove suckers when they're small enough to pinch with your fingers, so you don't leave a gaping wound on the stem. If you do have to cut them, use a sharp knife or pruner blade to make a clean cut as close to the main stem as possible without damaging stem tissue.

A fully grown tomato plant requires six to eight hours of daily sunlight to produce flowers and then fruits. Without proper sunlight, the tomato plant will have leggy and spindly growth and little or no fruits. To produce tomatoes the plant requires energy which they receive from sunlight.

Adding Epsom salts to your plant either through foliar spray or direct watering is a great way of boosting micronutrient absorption. This helps your tomato plant produce large, juicy, and very sweet fruits. Remember that a little bit goes a long way and too much can cause more problem than it fixes.

Coffee grounds are packed with nutrients that tomato plants love, like nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. They help improve soil structure and promote microbial activity, which can lead to healthier, more robust tomato plants. Plus, they may even help deter certain pests.

Tomato plants have big appetites and need a steady supply of plant food to grow their best. Miracle-Gro® Performance Organic® Edibles Plant Nutrition Granules feeds both your plants and the beneficial microbes in the soil (which help plants take up all the nutrition they need) for up to 6 weeks.

The advantage in removing the lower leaves is that the plants energies go into producing fruit rather than a lot of foliage. Also the lower leaves tend to get powdery mildew so it is good to remove them to stop disease spreading.

Why are my tomato plant leaves curling up but no fruit? ›

Wind damage

High winds, blowing dust and low humidity can damage the leaves and stems on tomato plants. Heat and low moisture can cause the edges of the tomato leaves to die back, then twist and curl. Hot dry weather may also cause a symptom called physiological leaf roll.

Among the most common reasons for tomatoes not ripening are high temperatures, too much nitrogen in the soil, too many fruits on one plant, and the type of tomato you're growing. Here's how to determine which issue is the culprit and what you can do about it.

Here's a simple recipe for side-dressing tomatoes: When fruit begins to develop, spread ½ cup of a 5-10-5 fertilizer around the base of a tomato plant. Gently work the fertilizer into the top inch of soil. Fertilize tomatoes again with a ½ cup of 5-10-5 when the first fruit is harvested.

Maintaining temperature in the ideal range is very important for tomato fruit set. The optimum temperatures are 60-75°F (night) and 60-90°F (day). Studies showed that exposing plants to 3-h periods of temperatures above 104°F on two successive days may caused fruit set failure.

Why are my tomatoes taking a long time to ripen? The most common reason tomatoes take a long time to ripen is too much heat from temperatures that remain above 85 degrees F.