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Grittyville, WA

Old topic I am sure. Some blooms are obviously huge --the ones that look like a sunflower-- but other than that... how do you tell? Is the number of little ribs on the baby tomato useful? Seems to me that the sepals (green outer flower part) and the size or shape of the stem, may not be useful?

1/6/2020 7:00:19 AM

Lebanon, Oregon

If it’s a large to larger flowers I’ll pollinate all of them. If they don’t take or have a crazy shape, or not fully fused I can always cut them off.

1/6/2020 1:28:19 PM

Norfolk, UK

I go by sepal count if I get stuck with similar blooms. Each variety however has a different sepals count per normal, single flower.

To try and 'guess' or confirm the multiple, or chose between two similar pollinated flowers, I'll count and reckon on that being the multiple vs the normal count.

I'm go with higher sepal count all things being equal (tho in reality, I'll also evaluate position of bloom, layout of megabloom, regular grow in all sections and anything else I think of to choose)

1/6/2020 4:00:01 PM

Grittyville, WA

Yes, even if the flower looks good... the tomato needs to grow for a few weeks before you know if you got complete pollination and a good growth rate. I'm going to go with ribs as an indicator this year...

1/6/2020 8:18:52 PM

Grittyville, WA

Last year I let four blossoms grow simultaneously. Three singles and one triple. Of the singles, I think it was the one with the most ribs that ended up the largest. But, I wasn't very careful in my observations. The triple was a dud and got surpassed in weight by the largest single.

The four added up to ten pounds, the largest was 3.5 lbs.

1/6/2020 8:22:45 PM

Bloomington, IN USA

How the young fruit grows is the determining factor.
I have looked at the “x” of the blossom and counted sepals (which can be rather tedious).
But I have many times seen 3 or 4x fruit outgrown by a vigorous 1x.
I have found that there is some variability in the number of sepals among different varieties, for example Brutus Magnum tends to have more numerous sepals, May or may not produce the largest fruit.

1/9/2020 11:23:15 PM