📌 Quick Diary Summary: The Tomato Jungle
- 🌱 The Problem: Heavy watering (to help plants survive extreme heat) causes explosive vegetative growth. By early July, indeterminate tomatoes can easily hit the 7-foot (2.2m) ceiling of a greenhouse.
- ✂️ Option 1: Topping. Simply pinching off the main growing tip stops vertical growth, but it limits your total harvest to whatever fruit has already set.
- 📉 Option 2: Lean and Lower. Strip the harvested bottom branches, untie the plant, and slide the bare stem down to the ground, giving the top of the plant more headroom to keep growing.
- ⚠️ The Risk: Tomato vines are brittle. If you aren’t careful when lowering them, it is very easy to accidentally snap the main stem!
Aleksan9ra wrote:
My tomatoes are an absolute jungle…
You call that a jungle? Look at mine! It’s been blazing hot for 2 months, so I’ve been watering them heavily to help them survive the heat. As a result, they exploded with growth and have already smashed right into the ceiling of my 7.2 ft (2.2 m) greenhouse.
The Summer Sun cherry tomato doesn’t even fit under the arch anymore, I have to literally duck to get past it. At least they are starting to ripen… The second aisle is looking a little better. And to think, it’s only July 3rd…
Valtwelve wrote:
…they exploded with growth and have already smashed right into the ceiling…
Same here! I’ve never had them hit the roof this early in the season! I honestly have no idea what to do with them next. If it were just one or two plants, I could train them horizontally along the ceiling wires, but they are ALL like this!
Should I just top them (pinch off the main growing tips)? And maybe let a few bottom suckers grow out instead?
Tatka wrote:
Should I just top them? And maybe let a few bottom suckers grow out instead?
Trying to grow out bottom suckers this late is useless in our climate, in my opinion.
Here is my plan: once the lowest clusters of tomatoes ripen, I’ll harvest them, prune off all the bottom leaves, and carefully lower the bare stems down toward the ground to give the tops more room. Honestly, though, this will be my first time trying it.
Valtwelve wrote:
…carefully lower the bare stems down toward the ground…
I am way too clumsy for that. Whenever I try to lower them, I end up snapping them. I’ve already accidentally decapitated three plants trying to do it! 😂
👨🔬 Editor’s Botanical Note: The “Lean and Lower” Technique
When growing indeterminate tomatoes (which can grow 10 to 15 feet long) in a standard greenhouse, they will inevitably hit the ceiling. Valeriy correctly identified the best professional solution: Leaning and Lowering.
Because tomatoes ripen from the bottom up, the lowest 3 feet of the plant is usually bare and fruitless by mid-summer. Instead of letting the top of the plant crush against the roof, you untie the main support string, slide the bare bottom portion of the stem down to the ground (letting it coil or lay horizontally), and retie the string. This drops the top of the plant back down to eye level so it can keep growing upward.
Why Tatka’s “bottom sucker” idea is bad: In short-season northern zones, if you try to start a new sucker from the bottom of the plant in July, it will take 3 to 4 weeks to flower, and another 40 days to ripen fruit. Winter will kill the plant before you get a single tomato. Lowering the existing stem is always the better choice!
