Rule of leaf to flower ratio of tomato and how to use it to increase yield

I was waiting impatiently for the last frost date and I must be bored that I started counting leaves on my nightshades to be transplanted. The largest ones are already blooming or have buds developing. The buds all appear after the plants reach around 10 true leaves. I check the following plants: 5 paul robeson tomatoes, 2 big rainbows, 1 egg plant, and a few bell peppers.

It's not surprising that plants need to reach certain sizes to start producing. But here it looks like the first appearance of flower bud is programmed: the young 7 weeks old bell pepper is less than 3 inches tall and has 9 leaves, but when I used a macro lens and zoomed in I saw a tiny bud. Given it takes days or maybe weeks for the bud to differentiate and grow, it means a much younger seedling already has the flower destined.

Does anyone see the same thing on nightshades, under different growing conditions? I don't know what's the use for the observation but at least it gives me something to count and look forward to.

Btw, I don't let peppers and eggplants to bear fruits too young so I always remove the first and maybe subsequent two flowers.

Pull off flowers with young plants.

That's a very interesting observation. I'll have to check it out on my plants when they are bigger.

Yes, I removed some flower buds, not only because the plants are still young but also because I am trying this as a technique to shape the plants.

Some YouTuber suggested removing 1st terminal bud for paul robeson tomato. When I did that, it seems the plant grew double leaders of similar sizes, compared to the more dominant central vine of the control. So if I keep on snipping off certain buds at certain positions, hopefully i will get a plant with multiple branches that are balanced.  Such a plant will be easy to trellis, has better air circulation and gets higher yield.

There are lots of articles elaborating on pruning tomatoes, i am new to this and need to gain some experiences on my own. Does it matter to remove just terminal bud, whole unopened cluster or young fruit? I believe that manipulating buds at different developmental stages should affect the production and channeling of plant hormones differently.

Here is an example. I have been thinning bell peppers with too many flowers. They seem to produce exponentially, doubling in numbers every round but each fruit is getting smaller. If I rub off one bud, two will come up and it's never ending. In retrospect, I should've removed young fruits instead.  Besides controlling yield, I will be able to shape of scaffold of the pepper plant too( it's like a little tree).

Nightshades are interesting plants and I have a lot to test some ideas this year.

I got it figured out for indeterminate beefsteak tomatoes at least.  There is a rule of 10,3 and 5 leaves when it comes to branching and flower cluster formation.

Basically when a tomato grows 10 leaves, the first flower bud is visible. And it will form a new flower cluster growing every 3 leaves, giving the leaf: fruit cluster ratio of 3:1. Auxiliary bud under the flower cluster grows into a side branch, after growing 5 leaves, it produces the first flower, and one every three leaves afterwards. And secondary side shoots can form on the primary one following the same pattern. For beefsteak, flowers on the side shoots are about 2 clusters later in developmental stages than those on the stem that the shoots come out of.

Tomatoes are produced in a modular way: several clusters set fruits and grow, during this time vegetative growth slows down, when the tomatoes are about to ripe, another flush of growth and flowering occurs.

In the article here, the author mentioned the 3:1 ratio as well as the module of 6 clusters in green house production. My Paul Robeson and big rainbow are trained to have 4 lower stems and I got 8 clusters of 12 tomatoes total in the first flush. They are producing the second flush now.

https://www.gardenmyths.com/growing-tomatoes-removing-bottom-leaves/

Last year I grew beefsteaks for the first time and I had problems with messy vines not well supported and lots of unripe tomatoes at first frost. with better understanding of growing tomatoes this year, I am trying to tackle the two issues and made some progress so far.

For the staking, I removed flowers and kept certain amount of suckers when the plants were young. Depending on the variety, growing condition, space and staking options, my plants have 2 to 8 stems that are supposed to grow well supported till the end of season. And I removed young suckers promptly so to maintain the numbers of stems. Young suckers are below the new flower clusters and easy to locate. At this stage (1 to 2 inches long), they can be snapped off easily, the wounds heal quickly and minimum energy from the plant is wasted.

The numbers of unripe fruits at frost frost will be greatly reduced too if no more suckers are allowed. The plants will continue to produce more constantly through the season. Right now, my plants roughly put out three leaves and a flower cluster per week. There are seven layers from mature fruit at the bottom to new flower bud at the top. I am figuring out a model to calculate when I need to top off the plants to get more mature fruits.

Of course in real life plants don't grow in a linear way and there are weather, pests and other stuff getting in the way. Anyway, I found growing tomatoes fun and hope this thread will help other growers too.

One trick to get your tomatoes to ripen before frost hits is to prune off the top growth, including flowers that have not yet started to be fruit, one month before frost is expected. This forces the plant's energy into ripening the fruit that is on the plant. I've also had good luck with cutting down my tomatoes just before frost and hanging them upside down in the garage. It is really amazing how long they keep and continue to ripen!

The leaf/flower ratio all comes down to the balance between vegetative and reproductive growth. Here are the schematic diagrams of two leader plant and the extreme case of letting a tomato to produce maximum numbers of side shoots (but still limited to only below one flower cluster).

The letters ABCDE represent the flower clusters from bottom up

Model A

J.     1  1
H.    1  1
G.     1  1
F.      1  1
E.      1  1
D.      1  1
C        1  1
B.         1
A.         O

Model B

F. 1 11 1 1 1 1 1
E.   1 1 1 1 1
D.     1 1 1
C.        1 1
B.          1
A.          1

As the growing of side shoots is vegetative until it has enough energy to support reproductive growth, a plant with lots of side shoots look green, leafy but produce less fruits. If hit by sudden frost, there are more numbers of flowers and unripe fruits.

Hypothetically, if one keeps removing flowers from an indeterminate tomato to put off reproductive growth, let it form lots of side shoots then let flowering after certain time point, will it produce like a determinate variety? Has anyone done this to find out?

Jen Swanson wrote:One trick to get your tomatoes to ripen before frost hits is to prune off the top growth, including flowers that have not yet started to be fruit, one month before frost is expected. This forces the plant's energy into ripening the fruit that is on the plant. I've also had good luck with cutting down my tomatoes just before frost and hanging them upside down in the garage. It is really amazing how long they keep and continue to ripen!

Sorry I miss this one. How about the favor of tomatoes ripen on vine indoor? I didn't prune last year and ended up with lots of green ones. Even they finally changed color the taste was bland and many rotted during the period. I was bad at trellising too and had a big mess to deal with.

I will try topping one month before frost like you said. It takes a while for the branch to re-establish and form new sucker it doesn't have enough time to produce new flowers.

This is a black beauty beefsteak tomato plant that I sucker prune this year. I put a sheet behind to show the plant better. It has ten leaders and now over five feet tall and four feet wide with over twenty fruits ripening.

Since I got no feedback regarding the rule of branching in the determinate tomatoes, I went on to grow and observe myself. I have three Roma tomatoes plants big enough by now to see the patterns.

In the indeterminate beefsteak tomato plants, which fruit every three leaves on the main branch and new side shoots fruit after first five leaves then every three leaves after that. In the determinate type, those numbers were reduced to two, three and two respectively. Overall the plants are bushy with more branches and flowers, and the fruits will mature over a shorter period of time.

In general, the understanding of tomato branching/ fruiting patterns helped me get better yield this year. I had to relax auxiliary bud pruning when there was a hornworm infestation mid summer. Redundancy were desirable under that circumstance. My most healthy celebration tomato is ripening the last batch of 30 fruits on 10 intentionally pruned vines right now.