Has anybody else noticed more megablooms on their toms this year? I am in the UK and we have had, to put it mildly, an absolutely rotten growing season so far with cold, rain and random heat waves. I am growing them outside this year (glutton for punishment!) and I am wondering if the stress of the changeable weather, them being stunted from the cold initially and then sudden spurts the plants are doing when warm is forcing these megablooms? Normally I only see them randomly on my beefs but they’re on my Atomic Fusion, Sgt Peppers, Crushed Heart and a few others too. I have never had so many at once. It’s not a complaint as I love a big mutant but they do sap a lot of the plant’s energy.
Just wondered if it was just me experiencing this?
by Pretend-Table6436
3 Comments
From my understanding cooler nights lend to more occurrences of megablooms, this is more often in earlier and later days of the season. You might be onto something with the fluctuating weather hypothesis.
That’s farming, right! It would be great if it weren’t for all the lousy weather, weeds or the bugs.
I tend to see more megablooms early on when there are cooler nights. I generally let them do their thing and there will be some interesting looking tomatoes as a result. I suppose if complicated tomatoes aren’t your thing, you can cut the megablooms off. Realistically, only some fraction of the crop, especially when dealing with heirloom beefsteak type tomatoes, will be perfect looking tomatoes.
From what I can tell, some folks are really, really into perfect looking and perfectly shaped tomatoes without any blemishes or imperfections. Growing heirloom tomatoes outside in uncertain weather is going to present challenges to those folks that place a high value on that perfect looking tomato.
Not necessarily seen more megablooms, but the amount of stems splitting into two has been ridiculous this year. I think that’s caused by the cold and temperature fluctuations as well.
(I’m in the Netherlands, so same weather and climate as the UK. Also growing outside)