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Tomatoes Not Setting Fruit

Q. Tomato vines look great, green, tall, but very little bloom or fruit production. What am I doing wrong? A. Are you in a hot climate? If the daytime temperatures are above the low 90's, and especially if the night-time temperatures do not cool down at least 15 degrees - basically into the '70's - tomato plants just do not set fruit well. They struggle to stay alive in very hot temperatures, and they use large amounts of water to do so, with transpiration taking as much as 95% of the water the plant receives on a very hot day. It becomes very important, therefore, to keep the soil moist at all times, so the heat stress to the plant is minimized. Another thing that can be done to help in this regard is to cover the plants with a 25-30% shade cloth during the hottest 3-4 hours of the day. One other factor that might contribute to the lack of fruit set is if there is no air movement around your tomato plants. Tomatoes have a "perfect" flower, meaning they have both male and female parts resident in the same blossom. Therefore no outside pollinators are necessary, but some movement is needed to shake the pollen from the male stamen onto the female pistil. Tomatoes grown in greenhouses sometimes are agitated gently to accomplish this. In the outside garden there is most often ample movement to accomplish pollination. Even the movement caused by pruning and removing sucker stems usually is sufficient for pollination to occur.

Last Modified: 2010-07-02 Number of views: 169