Growing your own veggies can be a joyous experience – it’s not just about reconnecting with nature, but also enjoying fresh produce straight from the soil. Whether you’re tending to a garden vegetable patch or an allotment, cultivating tomatoes can be incredibly rewarding.
Whether you’re a gardening newbie or a seasoned enthusiast, TikTok influencer Andre The Farmer has shared his top tip for growing tomatoes. Drawing on his years of gardening wisdom, he explained that when tomato plants are still small, they need to be pruned. Andre stated: “One of the things I’ve learned over the years is when you have plants, like tomatoes, or cucumbers, or peppers or squash – and they start flowering, and they’re really small, the best thing you can do is cut those flowers off.”
Demonstrating with a small tomato plant in the video, Andre clarified that the plant “is not ready to produce fruit”. Rather than allowing the plant to flower prematurely, he advises letting the plant focus on growth first, reports the Express.
“You’re going to get a much larger harvest and a better yield,” he assured viewers. “And a healthier plant in the long run.” Andre stressed the need to “sacrifice those early fruits for long-term success”.
The video garnered more than 2,000 comments, with one eager gardener joking: “Do you know how sad it made me to cut that tomato off?”.
Many commenters expressed their gratitude for the informative video, but one question kept cropping up. One green-fingered fan eagerly enquired: “How do you know when the tomato plant is big enough?
“I just noticed flowers on mine today and got excited.”
To which Andre offered his expertise, saying: “I’d say, for tomatoes, 16 to 18 inches [tall before bearing tomato fruit].”
Another keen gardener raised a point about removing young blooms, saying: “I was told I was supposed to leave them and, when harvested, those are the seeds you would replant next year.”
In response, Andre advised: “Not sure why. You will get way more [seeds] off a bigger, healthier plant.”
But the original poster stood their ground, responding: “I believe the idea was that the first set of fruits will be the best to keep the line viable.”
Yet another contributor weighed in, noting: “Seeds and plants are so cheap; unless it’s a really special or rare type of tomato, I don’t know why you’d plant those and decrease your harvest.”
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