Cherry Tomato's ???

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Flowering depends on size for most tomatoes, it's relatively photo period insensitive. Cherry tomatoes generally are harvested in stages, trust me it's a good thing, you don't necessarily want 800 tiny tomatoes at the same time.

If you live in a warm climate tomatoes may grow for multiple years and achieve huge sizes. As the stems root readily if there's ample ground some will spread quite well.

Determinant tomato varieties tend to get to a certain size, flower like mad & set at least one big flush of fruit that is harvestable at pretty much the same time. Great for canning, commercial use, not fab for fresh eating. Indeterminant varieties tend to just grow steadily and flower gradually, harvest is pretty staggered. Better for fresh eating, not great for big batch cooking. Those two categories are pretty flexible in my experience, what one breeder calls determinant another may not.

"The massive "tomato tree" growing inside the Walt Disney World Resort's experimental greenhouses in Lake Buena Vista, Florida may be the largest single tomato plant in the world. The plant has been recognized as a Guinness World Record Holder, with a harvest of more than 32,000 tomatoes and a total weight of 522 kg (1,150 lb).[50] It yields thousands of tomatoes at one time from a single vine. Yong Huang, Epcot's manager of agricultural science, discovered the unique plant in Beijing, China. Huang brought its seeds to Epcot and created the specialized greenhouse for the fruit to grow. The vine grows golf ball-sized tomatoes which are served at Walt Disney World restaurants."

Click to expand...

It has also been found that continuous lighting slows and delays fruit setting in tomatoes.
You can experiment with 24/0.

Peace

=K

I run mine at 14 hours and the room stays around 80-F all the time.
Here's a picture of our first tomatoes this year.
sorry for the slack picture.

Tomatoes are not photoperiod-sensitive. They will set flower, and then fruit, when they deem necessary. This is usually dependent on size, and whether they are determinate or indeterminate.

Interesting idea!

Interesting idea!

I just received my seed for the summer garden....thought I'd wait but I think now I might be inspired to set out a more mature plant.
I'd love any follow ups.

HMR

Right on guys, that's the spirit. IME what has been said by previous responders is absolutely correct. Tomatoes do not seem to be photoperiod sensitive. They should probably receive at least 12 hours of light to achieve good growth rates (indoors), and facilitate wet/dry cycles etc.

I grew three sungold tomato bushes indoors this winter. 1 was under a 600 HPS, the other 2 were under (2) 400 Metal Halides. They were absolutely delicious, and I had tomtoes for sandwiches and salads all winter. I noticed some differences in growth patterns between the two setups. The HPS was considerably bushier and seemed to encourage more dense flowering sites.The Halides seemed to keep the plants a bit more green (healthy?), though neither had any deficiencies to speak of (until I decided to see how long it took to flush to a nice yellow, once the plants had outgrown their containers and the fruit began setting smaller). Also the Halides seemed to set larger clusters up to 14-16 tomatoes on a flowering branch. The HPS seems to top out around 8 tomatoes per cluster, though more densely populated on the plant.

From now on when growing tomatoes indoors for their entire lives I am going to use the patio/container varieties and dwarf varieties. The HPS tomato was a giant bush and unruly horizontally. The Halide area was unruly height wise, talking like 5' plants easy.

The amount of water used by them was incredible. By halway through their lives each needed to be watered every other day in 7 gallon pots. It was a bit much to be honest. They chewed through fertilizer, I began using the Maxigrow and Maxibloom series, as it was uneconomical to continue on the PBP fertilizer regimen.

The health difference I mentioned between MH/HPS may have been attributable to me testing a new air cooled area with my 600 HPS.

In any case, good contributions so far in this thread. I will be starting my seeds for outdoor veggies in a couple weeks or so. This will be a first for me, as I have mainly grown for cuttings for the last 5 years. Should be fun, though I am a bit worried about hardening them off and trying to keep the bugs at bay (especially damn aphids).

The aphids dont seem to hit too badly until 6-8 weeks into the season, but they multiply so quickly once they get started. My harvests do not seem to be too badly affected. Though I just cant stand the sight of bad bugs on my plants, knowing they are harming them. We get some ladybugs here and there, but not nearly enough to thin the population of aphids significantly.

I am thinking of picking up some ladybugs from the local nursery once aphids start to hit (as they have the last 2 years). I was instructed to give the ladybugs a dilute spritz of soda to keep their wings a bit sticky and prevent them from flying away before realizing their is a significant food source for them.

Please keep the contributions coming. Thanks for your time and interest all.

BP

Excellent

Excellent

I just got my first Sungold in the mail this week. Buying from a catalog always eems a bit of a crapshoot.

Glad you like them.....I'm encouraged that I made a good choice.

Thanks,
HMR

the old trick with tomatoes is to leave them in a reasonably small pot - half as gallon or so - and dont repot or plant them out until the first flower truss has set. the root restriction speeds up the onset of flower.

the same thing seems to work for cannabis - keeping the roots a little restricted will speed up them showing sex or starting to flower - but of course you dont want them to get too rootbound and you need to repot them sharpish after sexing before the roots stop growing.

sungold are a great cherry although not a particularly high yield. there is an old variety in UK called 'gardener's delight' - its a large cherry but very hard to beat for ease of growing and flavor.

VG

great advice VG!
I moved my tomatoes outside last week in the hoop house. So far, with very cold night temperatures, the tomatoes are still alive and producing albeit at a much slower rate. I'm excited to see how well they'll do out in the real world soon.

I grow Sungold, Isis Candy,sweet pea, and a large sweet red cherry.

My tomato cage is about 7-8 foot tall and has 3 -4 inch round posts in a triangle pattern. About 9 square feet of a footprint.

The plants grow to the top and put out thousands of fruits.

Everyone congragates around the cage after smoking a joint. The cherry tomatos are just like sweet sugar candy






Ok I found a pic of My tomato cage. Maybe its more like 9 feet tall. Those are 4" diameter wood posts sunk in the ground and painted Prussian Blue. I got a zillion tomatos last year! All organic seabird guano, bat guano, kelp, They got 9 foot tall and flopped over the top. Baskets of tomatos every day.

Bump

Looking great!

I recently finished reading some 1950's research. It turns out that tomatoes are so photo insensitive that grafting them onto potato rootstock actually delays/halts photoperiod induced tuber formation. Pepper less so.

For a little bit of insight, we are planting tomatoes for greenhouse, about 4-6 week old plants for beefstake or ungrafted plants, 7-9 weeks from flower to fruit, 9 in winter time 7 in summer so roughly 3 months of sprouts to fruits give or take a couple weeks. Cherries are a little big faster of course, smaller tomatoes harvest sooner but again only a week or two.