Snipping Flowers for More Ripe Tomatoes
By Michelle Fabio
As summer winds down, you are hopefully seeing a lot of green tomatoes on your plants.
In order to ripen, they’ll need plenty of warm sun, but depending on where you live, this may be getting harder to come by, especially as days grow shorter into September.
So what can you do to ensure the maximum production of your tomato plant at this point?
You need to think quality not quantity, and so we turn to the newest growths on the plant.
Your precious plant is likely still producing flowers that, if given the proper time to mature, would eventually turn into wonderful tomatoes too.
Unfortunately, in many climates, these new flowers won’t have enough time to live out the life cycle until they end up red and juicy on your kitchen table.
In other words, the first frost will literally nip these flowers in the bud.
And so it is with a heavy, but well-meaning heart, that you should focus your attention beginning in mid-August (again, depending on your climate!) to snipping off the new flowers; this way your plant can use its already strained resources to ripen the existing tomatoes and ensure that you get the most out of your gardening efforts.
Until next year, of course.
