Questions on pruning tomatoes!

[murkleton]

Hey guys! First time poster. I have around 12 tomato plants growing. They are bush varieties of cherry tomato plants. They have began to flower in various stages.

I read on the internet that there's not a lot of need to prune bush tomato plants. However, some of the plants have 30+ flowers forming. Surely this will be too many for the plant to form nice fruit?

Should I prune some off? Or leave it?

Also, will i need to pollinate my plants like i am doing with my chillies? Or will bees do the work? If so... how?

[bantiekeeper]

Hi there, If you are growing the plants outside I would not bother to trim them. Its early days yet and as long as the weather conditions are ok you will be surprised at the number of fruits you will end up with.

[Lesley Jay]

Hi there, you are quite right, there is no need to side shoot (prune) bush tomato plants. You are growing cherry sized tomatoes so ideally you want loads and loads of flowers - enjoy!!

[poohpouri]

oh didnt know you had to pollinate chilli's? I just let them grow last year in the greenhouse and had hundreds

[Husker]

Hi Murkleton, and welcome . Lesley's right about it being great that you have loads of blooms on the cherry toms. With your 12 plants and a bit of good growing you may be up to your eyeballs in cherry toms lol. I don't do any hand pollinating except on some of my mellons. I do plant some flowers to attract bees to do the pollinating. They go from flower to flower carrying pollin dust on their bodies that will cause fruiting. A good breeze will also blow pollin from flower to flower. Sounds like you're doing great.

[golden14]

Originally Posted by poohpouri

oh didnt know you had to pollinate chilli's? I just let them grow last year in the greenhouse and had hundreds

Me too - I grow loads of chilis in my conservatory and am allergic to be and wasp stings so keep the door screened off so that I get a breeze but no insects, and I too get loads of chilis every year. Therefore they must self pollinate so to speak

[murkleton]

Aaah you guys were right!! My yellow toms are fruiting really well... theres loads!! The red varieties are not too far behind...