The tomato is one of the favorite plants to be grown by home gardeners at home. No wonder, since tomatoes are actually very easy to grow and produce a lot of delicious harvest with an aroma that is usually not found in commercial tomatoes. If only it weren’t for the stinging! In the following article you will learn that being miserly is actually quite simple and that you can certainly do without it.
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Cut out tomatoes
Pinching tomatoes is a necessary tool for many tomato plants if you want to get a bounty harvest. Tomato plants tend to grow bushy by nature. This means that they are constantly developing new side shoots that are getting longer and longer. Some tomato varieties develop shoots that reach up to four meters. Of course, they meander along the floor. Of course, a shoot with this weight does not stay in the air by itself. In addition, such a naturally growing tomato plant puts all its energy into the growth of these shoots and not into the development of the fruit. She only produces enough of them to ensure the next generation.
However, we want our tomatoes to grow very differently, upright and developing as many fruits as possible. That is why we prevent the tomato plants from developing their natural growth form. Instead, we force them to develop a strong, upright main shoot from which stable, fruit-bearing side shoots regularly branch off. To do this, you have to regularly remove the young shoots that are constantly appearing in the leaf axils, and in gardening circles this is called “squeezing out”.
Ausgeizen comes from “remove miserly instincts”, and the term Geiz developed in the Middle High German language from the words for greed and greed. Exaggerated thrift expressed in avarice was thus seen as one of the forms in which greed can express itself. Accordingly, in agriculture and viticulture, the stingy instinct is the secondary instinct that impairs the development of the main instinct. He “greedily” sucks the juice out of the plant – and it’s exhausted.
Proper sowing saves work when stinging
Whether you will have little or a lot of work with the stinging depends largely on whether you grow strong young plants that do not suddenly develop sheer small side shoots out of sheer panic (lack of light).
The tomato seeds should be pre-cultured in a warm greenhouse/window sill in the room at the end of February at the earliest. In a cold greenhouse not before mid-March and if you want to sow directly outdoors you should wait at least until the end of March. In very cool regions even after the ice saints in mid-May. All tomato plants that (have to) start their development earlier will suffer from insufficient light levels during growth and will therefore start producing new shoots like crazy.
Only a tomato plant that we grow under sufficiently benign conditions will grow so evenly that you can pinch out a few strong main shoots.
Schedule to exhaust
When the tomato plants come into the bed, they are allowed to acclimate for a short time. Then they are tied up. Now the exhaustion begins, usually from June.
The basic rule is that you should always use every side shoot that becomes visible in the leaf axils as early as possible. The smaller the wound on the tomato plant, the faster it will heal and the plant can start growing again.
It will be exhausted until September. The tomato plants will not stop growing rival shoots to the main shoot until after harvest.
avarice drive or fruit drive
Anyone who deals with the misery for the first time regularly expresses the fear of removing more fruit shoots than miserly shoots.
This cannot happen at all, because you can never confuse a stinging shoot with a flowering shoot. The stinging shoots really only appear in the leaf axils, i.e. exactly at the point where one shoot attaches to another shoot and begins to grow.
The flower shoots, on the other hand, never develop in a leaf axil (there is no space for how they could develop a tomato), but directly at the end of a shoot, they grow straight out forward.
Chop tomatoes properly
Now that you know (from) when you should pick up and what you have to take away, you will now learn how to best pick up the tomatoes:
- Remove stinging shoots early
- you can wait until they are about 3 to 5 cm long
- first stinging shoots are still quite soft
- It is best to clip between two fingernails
- It is best to break out older stinging shoots
- If miserly shoots are accidentally too old and therefore very firm and hard, you can also use a knife or scissors
- distant stems color and smell
- wearing thin disposable gloves is recommended
- As an alternative, rub your hands well, tomato dye can then be washed off more easily
- use a tool or your fingernails to put a wash between two tomato plants, otherwise viral diseases could be transmitted
- Pick tomatoes on a warm, dry day
- then the wounds of the plant close the fastest
- about once a week put stinging on the work schedule
- best time to indulge in the morning
Tips on everything to do with tomatoes
- continue to use pinched shoots
- grow new tomato plants from these offshoots
- put small shoots in pots and provide neighbors and friends with tomato plants
- the tomatoes grown from them are usually still ready for harvest in the current season
- First place the stinging shoots in a glass of water
- after about a week roots have formed
- then into the ground
- Use removed shoots for mulching
Disadvantages of pinching tomatoes
As a rule, you will achieve a higher harvest by pinching. But it also has disadvantages that should not be concealed:
- Stabilize tomatoes with climbing aids so that they grow vertically
- Gardeners reject this unnatural growth
- do not consider it to be ecologically justifiable, but overlook the fact that the tomato is not part of our ecological environment
- According to another opinion, pinching is harmful because it causes wounds
- every wound is an entry point for germs
Overall, it can be an option for connoisseurs to forego stinging:
Here you are forcing the plant to develop one strong main shoot instead of dozens of shoots. A few large fruits then grow on this main shoot. If you let the tomatoes grow naturally, you will develop more and smaller fruits. When these mature, they could become real flavor packs. However, that is difficult in our climate. In rather cool locations, the tomatoes often cannot ripen during the season.
However, you could do without pinching and let the tomato grow wide on the ground. This could be an advantage for the plant because tomato plants are not actually designed to grow tall and develop strong shoots there. They actually want to grow in width and should develop stronger shoots if they are allowed to. So, depending on the variety, it may well be worth trying not to overdo it. Try out what fruits the tomato produces when it grows naturally.
It is better not to exhaust these tomato varieties
With some varieties, it is recommended anyway to refrain from pinching:
- In fact, only all “stick tomatoes” are pinched out, i.e. varieties suitable for growth on a trellis.
- These are also often grown in the greenhouse, where pinching and tying up also serves to ensure good ventilation and thus prevents fungal diseases.
- With vine tomatoes, however, bushy growth is the goal, so there is no pinching with these varieties.
- Even all varieties that call themselves bush tomatoes, cocktail tomatoes or party tomatoes do not have to be exhausted.
- These varieties also include most “wild tomatoes”, “currant tomatoes” such as the “Red Marble” or “Golden Current” and the balcony tomato varieties.
- Because these varieties can grow naturally and without being exhausted, and the small fruits still ripen, they are becoming more and more popular.
Conclusion
Tomatoes are really no secret. However, it is quite possible to do without it, preferably by choosing a new variety of tomatoes. You never have to exhaust vine tomatoes. What you should not do without under any circumstances is the care that is required in parallel to the maximum, from possible help with pollination to irrigation and fertilization to the defense against fungi and pests.