Brick and Mortar Dreams: Indeterminate, Determinate and Suckers!

I'm learning a lot as a first time gardener. Like, tomatoes need a lot of space. I started out with 9 tomato plants per two big pools. I got a smaller pool and moved a plant out from each pool. Then I removed another plant out from each of the big pools leaving 4 plants in one small pool and 7 in each of the large pools. Next year, I think I had better plan on 6 plants per large pool and four in the smaller pools.

Did you know there are indeterminate and determinate tomato varieties? I freaked out a bit when I learned this and hadn’t known which kind I had gotten. Most varieties are indeterminate, which mean they produce fruit from maturity to frost. Determinate tomato varieties produce fruit for a specific amount of time and then are done. Typically that is about 4 weeks. Paste tomatoes are typically determinate tomatoes. Most gardeners would want indeterminate varieties and enjoy BLTs through the season, but some canners would prefer determinate varieties. Roma tomatoes are a determinate variety and celebrities are semi determinate. I have both, but all the other plants are indeterminate varieties.

Another thing I've learned is that you need to prune tomato plants! Who knew?!? I know of two ways to prune tomatoes. The first is to remove all the leaves/branches from the tomato stem(s) up to the first cluster of fruit. I haven’t gotten that specific, but I have tried to remove a lot of the branches/leaves from the bottoms of most of the plants. This encourages air flow and decreases the risk of disease.

The second way to prune tomato plants is to remove the suckers. Suckers form in the middle of a Y and are a drain on the plant. A lot of gardeners recommend you remove them.

Sucker;