Over the past week I’ve tried my best to pollinate the megablooms using plastic spoons, small paintbrushes, and a vibrating toothbrush. For the most part I have been unable to extract any pollen. Perhaps one in ten open tomato blossoms yields any pollen at all. Flower thrips fall out instead.
I’m finding that 10 a.m. is too late in any case. Either the pollinators have beat me to the pollen or it’s just too hot for viable pollen to form. So far this summer has been significantly cooler than 2013, but still last 6 days have reach 97, 98, 98, 97, 99 and 99° – just too hot for tomato production.
Anyhow, among the megablooms profiled last week, three are definitely dead and none of the rest have definitely set fruit. It appears that the most likely to set is the Porterhouse blossom.
In the giant tomato bed, one pleasant surprise is a pair of balanced triples on Epstein’s Potato Leaf (a Big Zac derivative):
I’m anxious to see how these grow – the vine is very healthy!
Some discussion about whether and how one might induce production of megablooms. Here’s another idea and observations –
In the backyard high tunnel, I’ve been pruning each vine to only one stem. Predictably I make mistakes! About 3 weeks ago I pruned off all growing tips of the Big Rainbow (1.888 DT 2011) vine – NOT in the plan. However, the plant desperately wanted to grow and it has found a way. The plant is about 1/3 the size of most other vines, the leaves are deep green and large, and finally, the past few days, a couple of very thick, rather deformed suckers have started shooting up.
Here’s a pic the Big Rainbow vine this morning:
And a massive megabloom developing:
Here’s a closeup:
And a second megabloom forming on the other thick sucker:
It’s too early to tell what they might produce, but it’s pretty clear that the over-aggressive pruning induced the development of these “megabuds”. I’ve grown this variety for the past three years and don’t recall seeing anything beyond the occasional double blossom.
So between well timed excessive heat (via leaving the plastic closed up too long) and pruning everything off, it appears that megabloom induction is indeed possible! Whether these will lead to 8+ pound tomatoes remains to be seen…
Delectation of Tomatoes, etc. 