Increasing Tomato Yield | Yara United States (2024)

FAQs

Increasing Tomato Yield | Yara United States? ›

It is important to avoid excessive leaf pruning in high light environments as the crops can be at risk of sunscald. Maintaining a leaf area index of 3 will maximize fruit growth. Hand thinning of tomatoes on the end of a truss ensures more evenly sized, larger fruit.

Damu – For Bigger Fruit

Damu works by helping plants move photosynthates from the leaves where they are made to the fruit. This helps improve size of tomatoes ahead of picking.

More specifically, approximately one-third of the world's tomatoes and 95% of United States' tomatoes are produced in California. Some of the areas where tomatoes are grown include Sacramento Valley and San Joaquin Valley.

Called "topping," this type of pruning causes the plant to stop flowering and setting new fruit, and instead directs all sugars to the remaining fruit. This way, the fruit will ripen faster, plus it becomes more likely that the green tomatoes you pick before frost will actually ripen when you bring them indoors.

If you're faced with tomato plants not setting fruit, the best thing to do is to keep the plants healthy and fertilized with plant food, such as Miracle-Gro® Shake 'n Feed® Tomato, Fruit & Vegetable Plant Food. The plants will start to produce again when the weather becomes favorable.

Temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit during the day can cause the blossoms to drop without setting fruit. If evening temperatures fall below 55 degrees, remain above 75 degrees, or if the humidity is too high, blossoms can also drop prematurely. Tomatoes are pollinated by wind or insects.

If your goal is to maximize the harvest, prune suckers sparingly. A good compromise is to remove all suckers that grow below the first flower cluster. This helps keep the main supporting stem strong, but it doesn't remove upper suckers that will eventually produce flowers and fruit.

What is the tomato capital of the United States? ›

Jacksonville is located in East Texas, north of the county seat, Rusk, and south of Tyler, in Smith County. Area production and shipping of tomatoes gained the town the title "Tomato Capital of the World".

So far, the agreements between retailers and growers are limited to Florida's tomato fields, which in itself is no small feat considering that the state produces 90 percent of the country's winter tomatoes.

If evening temperatures fall below 55 degrees, remain above 75 degrees, or if the humidity is too high, blossoms can also drop prematurely. Tomatoes are pollinated by wind or insects. During extreme weather conditions, there can be low populations of insects, which will result in low fruit production.

One way to prune suckers, other than simple pruning, is to pinch them off at the tips rather than the base of the shoot. By leaving a few leaves, you allow the plant to produce more energy for ripening tomatoes, plus you give shade to ripening fruit. This technique is called “Missouri pruning.”