Healthy Tomato Plants Won't Bear Fruit

by Anthony
(Beaumont, Texas)

I planted six Celebrity tomato plants about 60-70 days ago. They were planted in good top soil, have been watered religiously, and supplemented once or twice with Miracle Grow tomato food.

The plants are lush and very pretty, nice rich green color. They started to flower out a few weeks ago, but no fruit ever took the place of the flowers.

The plants are about 4 1/2 feet tall now, and no sign of bearing any fruit. Should I do anything particular, or just give them more time? I figured we would be eating tomatoes by now.

ANSWER:

Here in Oregon, we have a pretty short tomato growing season. We usually stop watering our tomato plants around the 4th of July. That causes the plants some stress, and they will start producing fruit.

You may be over-watering a bit, which will make the plants healthy and happy, but they will put most of their energy into growing bigger instead of producing fruit.

Also, sometimes I prune some of the excess foliage away so that the tomato plants put more of their energy into producing fruit, and less into growing great mounds of foliage!

Before you prune, have someone show you which branches can be safely trimmed away. You don't want to cut off the stems that will be producing blossoms and fruit.

You didn't mention the weather conditions. But
tomatoes need hot weather to develop fruit. So if you had a cool spell, that can also delay the onset of fruit production.