Hi all!
I live in an apartment with a south-facing balcony (zone 8a). The first two pictures are my cherry tomato plant (Super Sweet 100) from last summer (July and September, respectively). It grew huge, the yields were great, and the fruit tasted great, so I’ve planted another one of the same varietal this year (third pic).
Last summer, once the plant had grown to the height of the balcony, it kept trying to grow taller, but the stems were really leggy and didn’t produce a lot of leaves or fruit. You can see in both pics that it gets stringy at the top. I kind of let it get out of control because I wanted to see what would happen, but this year I’d like to go about this smarter.
My question: do you have any advice on how to encourage leaf/fruit growth rather than stem growth? Or what to do once my plant gets close to the roof? Do I just cut off all stems that grow past that point and can’t get light anymore? I’ve heard that “beheading” a plant is bad for it, but honestly I still don’t really understand what that entails.
I’m also growing a Juliet plant, if advice is different for that.
Details: plants are each in 5-gal buckets (with drainage holes), miracle gro all-purpose potting mix, with added eggshells and Espoma tomato-tone fertilizer. They have pine needles as mulch and get water every day as needed. I haven’t been pruning too much except near the soil.
Tl;dr what should I do when a cherry tomato grows to roof height? Or is there anything I can do before it gets that tall to encourage a more productive growth pattern?
by alex-guarnaschelli