Just like the title says, my tomato plants seem to be outgrowing the net container. Should I continue to cut the tops, or risk moving them out of the container? The other plants in the enclosure are a dwarf tomato plant (tons of flowers but no tomatoes yet) and a jalapeno plant (huge, but no flowers, so I have no idea what's going on there)
I initially put them in the container because of the wind I get on my balcony. For reference I'm on the 24th floor, in Miami FL (zone 11a I think?), balcony faces west and north.
by Irish_Astronaut
8 Comments
My tomatoes were over eight feet tall last year. Do you know what type of plant you have? Determinate vs Indeterminate? But besides that, idk what your wind is like in Miami, but once a plant is that size, they can generally tolerate wind if they’re staked up.
As for no fruit, you may have a lack of pollinators on the 24th floor and may have to pollinate the flowers yourself
the tent is keeping the bees out
Your tomatoes are not going to get pollinated inside that tent, and thus you will not get any tomatoes
To the folks worried about bees, don’t be. With wind that strong they’ll shake and self pollinate. The only problem covering tomatoes is if they’re not shimmied occasionally (by wind or human works).
Tomatoes need buzz pollination
Or you can take a q tip and rub every yellow flower gently
I used to garden on a 15th floor corner balcony. It was very windy. I would use a bamboo blind to wrap the container when it was too windy or hot. Try a patio hybrid variety of tomatoes next year that don’t grow so tall. I would cage these and hope for the best.
If this is an indeterminate variety of tomato, then you are decreasing your potential yield by continuing to cut the tops. Ideally, you should encourage one vine to grow vertically and remove the other suckers or leaders that shoot horizontally from the sides of the plant. Given your particular setting and the wind on the balcony, I would investigate possible means of securing the vine so it doesn’t break in the wind (stakes, cages, etc). You may need to get a little creative, but I don’t recommend using this net bc it’s limiting the ability of the vine to continue its upward growth.
Set them free.