As the title states, my Brandiwine tomato plant, that has always been very healthy, and has grown to be enormous, has produced almost no fruit. This is despite all of the 5 tomato and 3 pepper plants near it having produced a ton of fruit. The plants main stem orgins inside of this 18” raised bed with a soil/compost mix, 60:40 I believe.
Let’s address the elephant in the room first, yes I know it could have been pruned down to a single stem. It shouldn’t be touching the ground because risk of disease. And it probably should have been supported better. The bed was also a bit overcrowded, we didn’t expect any of our plants to flourish to this scale. If any of this was the issue, I’d love to know more about why. Otherwise, let’s just say those are things I could’ve done better and move on.
The plant produced a ton of flowers throughout the season, and still is. I have tried hand pollinating with taps and the vibration of an electric shaver, these were never successful. All plants nearby had no pollination issues.
What could’ve been the cause of this failure of a plant, and what can I do different for it next? Is it possible it was just a dud of a plant? It produced a few severely cat-eyed tomatoes, and that was about it. The arrow indicates where the main stem is, and you can see the edge of the raised box, that continues, on the right side of the picture. So basically it’s spilling out of the box onto the yard.
Thanks in advance
by Got_wake
3 Comments
Bro you can exhale on a brandywine the wrong way and it refuses to fruit. Heat, cold, sunlight, nutrients, it could be anything.
Fuck brandywine all my homies hate brandywines (to grow, not to eat!)
Too much nitrogen? Not enough sun?
My guess is it’s just a dud–a sterile genetic abnormality.
There are factors that reduce production in a place like this. Soil quality might be the wrong balance of nutrients, encouraging high green with low flowers and fruit, and it might be too sheltered to get proper sun or wind to shake the flowers, for example.
But there are other plants nearby that are productive (we can see them in the pic!) and you got some catfaced fruits, so it made *some* just *bad ones*, but it also didn’t make *a lot of bad fruit* so something is off. You also manually pollinated, so it should have done more than two or three. I also see flowers, but not a lot.
If this was my spot, what I’d do is have the soil tested (effort but tells you a lot) and make sure it’s getting adequate light and air flow all around it so that the plant knows to stop growing green and start making fruit. Being able to get around it on all sides will make it more likely to fruit properly and make it easier to see and get the tomatoes too.
If the spot can be confirmed to get adequate light, adequate space/airflow and the soil is the proper mix for tomatoes, I’d stick something bulletproof in that spot next year and see how it does. Cherry Tomatoes can grow in a bucket of nails and will produce tons no matter what, and semi-determinate or determinate varieties like paste tomatoes will put out a ton of flowers/fruits all at once. If a cherry or determinate paste tomato don’t put out tomatoes in that spot, and the data says they should, then I might hire an exorcist or put something like a squash in that spot.