Fancy this! Cherry Tomato with Triple Trusses!
From Containers to Canopies, tomatoes that make trusses just make you feel abundance is flowing! How luxurious to clip off a cluster of tomatoes along a stem with a single snip! What a splendid gift to share!
They can be big tomatoes or mini cherries. It can be one of many on a single truss, as in the case of cherry tomatoes, or one of several larger fruit, such as beefsteak slicing tomatoes. Either could take several sittings to finish eating! You could grow one plant or a farmer’s row!
Graham Tranter of Bridgnorth in Shropshire, UK, grew a single tomato stem (or “truss”) that yielded a record 488 tomatoes when counted during the October 2010 harvest. Green-fingered Graham beat his own record, set the previous year at 304 tomatoes.
Outdoors or in your greenhouse! There are special truss tomatoes bred specially for greenhouse growing! Advantages are no bugs, grow all year.
Varieties make a decided difference!
Size is important! You can get squatty container varieties, patio plants, or Determinate Bush types that don’t get very tall but produce sooner and all at once – great for canning! You can get vining Indeterminate types that go on all summer long, keeping your table filled with toothsome happiness!
Clusters can be long or short, be cherries or sandwich filling slicers! And cherries can be smaller or larger! Cherries: If you are looking for long drama, Rapunzel – up to 40 fruits/truss, suitable for container growing, at left, and Sweet Million, are great choices! Super Sweet 100s are shorter and faster, but still long enough to get complimentary comments! They are a prolific cherry tomato F1 hybrid, Indeterminate, 65-70 days, great-tasting, heat tolerant and disease resistant! The vigorous indeterminate vines produce dozens of irresistibly sweet, bite-sized tomatoes on long trusses. Other great cherries are F1 Sun Gold, Sunrise Bumble Bee, and heirloom Black Cherry.
Slicers! Look at this handsome double cluster VFFT 10 to 16 oz Goliath Italian Beefsteak Tomato, plenty of disease resistance, at left! Tanager Beefsteak is another red coming in at 8.9 – 10.5 oz, also great resistance! Frederick F1, 7-9 oz, is good in mildew prone areas including greenhouses and tunnels! Short internode lengths result in a compact plant, which works well for shorter less tall tunnels.
Plants can have no disease resistance or a lot of resistance. Look for resistance to powdery mildew, like Merlice. If you are getting slicers, look for crack resistance to avoid losing a good portion of your tomato. You worked hard to grow that beast!
Plants can be early varieties for northern short season cool summers or heat and drought tolerant. There are special greenhouse varieties and for tunnel and hoophouse growing. See Johnny’s super informative page Top-15 Tomatoes for Hoophouse & High Tunnel Production! Quite an education. They say: ‘Hands down, ‘BHN 589’ is the best determinate tomato for the hoophouse.’ There are several BHN tomatoes grown for specific purpose, for example their BHN 975 is an early tom to be grown in fall! They cater to farmers who want the best productive crops all year long!
Planting is the same as for non truss varieties. Various parts of the country have the same pest/diseases, where others have locality specific pests/diseases. Blights and Wilts Fungi are common to many areas. Please see special planting techniques and maintenance treatments to combat them at Wilts & Cucumber Beetles, Tomatoes & Cukes! Smart selection of Companion Plants makes a huge difference. Please consider merging important Companion Plants with your tomato beauties! See Tomato Varieties! Humble to Humongous & More – Companions!
Remove Side shoots, Suckers
Remove the side shoots from indeterminate tall varieties, but not from determinate bush varieties!
On the left is a side shoot. On the right is a supported Truss ‘branch’ with flowers!
All tomatoes get side shoots, suckers, the little sprouts that grow between the main stem and the branches. Many growers remove them no matter what kind of tomato they are growing. The side shoots are not producers, block air flow, create micro habitat that lets fungi flourish, shades the fruits slowing ripening. With growing trusses it is vital to remove them because you will only get so many trusses from each plant and the whole truss needs sunlight to ripen all the way down at once!
A truss ‘branch’ grows from the main stem and has the flowers on it that turn into tomatoes! Do not remove those!!!
Late summer, if your bush varieties are still producing lots of side shoots, even flower clusters, remove some so your plant’s energy goes into the flowers and fruit already maturing.
If it is early times in the season and you want more plants, let strong side shoots grow to 6″ or more, cut and plant them! That’s faster than starting from seed!
Support your Trusses!
Fruit of larger varieties can become quite heavy. There are several types of ties, clips, hooks, foam wire to protect your plant, and more! Clips extend from the truss to the tomato plant’s main stem or to the support system, such as a cage or other structure, holding the plant up. The little branches can pinch or kink. They can break in strong winds when heavily loaded. Install your supports while the little branches are still small and pliable.
At the end of a thread, here was the original questioner’s response due to his trials: I love the J hooks on most of the large trusses; but some of them needed the foam wire because they were too far from my drop lines. The J hooks are really easy to use but you do need lines to hook them to. I would love it if they made a J hook that had the J on both ends so you could hook it to another limb for support if a line wasn’t nearby. The foam wire works really good on those trusses that stand up and are far from the main stem. It is much easier to use and holds them more securely than tying the trusses with twine. The arches help a lot with those smaller trusses that have a shorter stem on them but you need to put them on early before the stem gets more rigid. All they do is give the stem a nice supported bend so when the weight of the fruit starts pulling it down they don’t kink as often. For more useful details, see the thread.
Luster Leaf Rapiclip Foam Wire Tie 835 safely holds heavier trusses, reusable, with no harm to plant or fruit. Search around for the best deal or something like it that works well for your needs.
Helping Trusses to Set Fruit
Tomato flowers are self-pollinating, which means that each blossom is composed of both male and female organs, and the wind usually disperses the pollen to the sticky end of the stamen.
Trusses have problems just like other tomatoes, but a special one, that ruins the symmetry, is Blossom Drop. Flowers can fail to pollinate, don’t (set fruit) and those flowers drop off their stems. You can pretend you are a Bumblebee! They do buzz pollination by wrapping their legs around the flower, vibrating their wings at high speed causing the pollen to drop! Some people say ‘gently tap the plants.’ I give mine mighty whaps, to the main stems that have flowers, and they produce prolifically! About 11 AM is the best time. If you are tech oriented, use an electric toothbrush, battery shaver or (blush) vibrator!
How Many Trusses will your tomato make?!
It’s good to remember that fewer trusses will usually produce ripe tomatoes sooner than one that has more trusses! Hmm, I would probably opt to wait a bit longer, LOL!
There are varying ‘rules’:
- Four trusses for plants grown outdoors
- Five or six trusses for plants in a greenhouse or polytunnel
- Four trusses (maximum) on a large variety but seven or eight on a cherry.
- If the plant is healthy, allow 7 to 8 trusses to form.
- If you live in a cool Northern area with a short summer it might be best to let only 3 trusses form, especially in poor summers.
There is also the consideration of when to stop your plant so it can finish maturing the trusses it already has before cooler weather sets in. Remove the growing tip two leaf branches above the top truss. Remove any trusses that come on later.
How Many Toms will there be on a truss?!
Of course we count them, LOL, as we eat them! It depends very much on the variety and growing conditions.
A medium size variety that has faced the demons of outside weather may only produce six tomatoes on the first truss, and be proud for it! Vigorous grafted varieties may produce around twenty! See Tomato Grafting?!?! THREE Times the Growth! From a vigorous cherry variety, you could get around fifty tomatoes on a truss in a good season!
Maintenance
As your plants mature, remove leaves that shade the lower trusses right back to the main stem! That gives more air flow and less disease. Your plant works more on production than leaves. We want a minimum of 6 hrs sun per day. When a truss is ripe, all branches below the ripe truss can be removed.
Like other tomatoes, Truss Tomatoes are also susceptible to Blight, Fusarium and Verticillium Wilts, Fungi! Please see Wilts & Cucumber Beetles, Tomatoes & Cukes! for special growing tips! As I scanned UK sites, again and again, Comfrey Tea was mentioned! One gardener recommends seaweed products to add minerals that are closely linked to flavor.
GRAFTING!
Many gardeners don’t have enough room to get the quantity of tomatoes they want. Some compensate by planting several plants, removing almost all the leaves, having larger fruits sooner but fewer of them, though en total, they get more tomatoes per the space used. Plus they have free space below to use for additional plants of other kinds. Grafting might be a smart choice for them…
See Tomato Grafting?!?! THREE times the growth! The tomatoes come in sooner, produce longer! Imagine that with a tomato that makes monster trusses! Alice Doyle, a co-owner of Log House Plants in Cottage Grove, OR, says the root balls of grafted tomatoes can stretch 4 to 6 or even 10 feet wide and deep, compared with a regular tomato root mass of 2 to 3 feet. So not only are they able to find more water and nutrients during a drought, their vigor helps them deal with extended heat. If you would like to try a grafted tomato, see Banner Greenhouses’s offerings! Though their offerings are probably meant for farmers, you will see the possibilities and may decide to do it yourself! Grafting is not difficult. See how! Johnny’s Seeds offers fine rootstocks, each best suited to a specific purpose, and will ship grafted tomatoes ready to plant!
Now. The question is ‘What if you don’t know your tomato is a truss tomato, or what a truss is?’ For years I grew Sungold cherries, a truss tomato, see those beauties at left, under exactly those conditions. When they got ripe I harvested and ate them on the spot. Yes, they did grow in little rows, but not so long as to be super impressive. Probably they didn’t get long, as I’ve seen in many images now, because I let them ALL grow at once, never limited the number of trusses, forcing growth to the few trusses allowed to remain! Worked for me. I got lots of tomatoes all summer long. So if this truss tending business isn’t for you, fine. If you like a certain variety, just grow it like any tomato and eat your toms as you will. Tomatoes have grown just fine without human intervention! None of what you don’t do damages your tomato except for no water. If you don’t know about trusses, you won’t wail about not having enough or long enough trusses, LOL! Nope. You just eat ’em as they are, right there at the garden, maybe dripping down your chin…
The magic of trusses is the beauty of their remarkable long chain or the gorgeous cluster of those tomatoes all in one place! The best thing about Truss tomatoes is they will keep ripening in the fruit bowl if you keep them attached to their stem.
Happy counting and Happy eating, LOL!
Updated
Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!
The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both of Santa Barbara City’s remaining community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.
[…] a stem carries anywhere between 12 and 30 cherry tomatoes, and, in very strong growing seasons, perhaps 50. He was determined to multiply that number at least […]
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This is a fun and short read! Enjoy and try your own; it improves your growing skills!
Thanks, US Wall!
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