Pruning encourages healthy growth, stimulates fruit production, and prevents disease and rot. Trim away the bottom branches 6 to 8 inches up the plant to promote airflow and to prevent disease. Remove suckers to help the plant focus energy on the main branch and its fruit.
What do you do with Early Girl tomatoes?
Early Girl tomatoes are considered ‘slicing’ tomatoes, and make great additions to sandwiches, bagels and quartered on salads. The sweet flavor makes for a wonderful soup or sauce, though preparations that require minimal cooking are more ideal for highlighting the early-season tomato’s flavor.
How tall do Early Girl tomato plants get?
Bush Early Girl Tomato Care & Growing Information
The Bush Early Girl Tomato typically reaches 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide. Spacing requirements between each plant is 24 – 36 inches. After planting, it takes approximately 54 days to reach maturity.
Why are my Early Girl tomatoes small?
The most common cause for small tomatoes is stressed plants. When plants are experiencing stressing circumstances, such as extreme drought or heat, insect infestation, or disease, they oftentimes stop sending their energy into flower or fruit production.
Do Early Girl tomatoes keep producing?
The Early Girl tomato is a beautiful red, round tomato with many perks including its sweetness and early ripening time. It’s a dependable, high-yielding tomato that is ready for picking 50 days after planting and continues to produce until the fall frost kills the plant.
Which is better Better Boy or Early Girl tomatoes?
Early Girls and Better Boys are both an indeterminate variety of tomatoes, meaning they grow tall with support and produce all season long with adequate sunlight. Several contributing factors make Early Girl and Better Boy tomatoes different from each other. Better Boys produce much larger fruit than Early Girls.
When should I pick my Early Girl tomatoes?
When to Harvest Early Girls. Fruit will come to maturity in about 50 days. They will turn bright red. Most growers pick them slightly before total ripeness as these tomatoes can become soft and lose their table appeal fairly quickly.
How do you prune early tomato plants?
Using a sharp, clean pair of pruning shears, snip these small sucker branches off. The best time to prune tomato plants is in the early morning on a dry day. This will allow for the wounds from the pruning to heal cleanly and will reduce the chances of the plant being infected by disease.
How often should you water Early Girl tomatoes?
These tomatoes need at least one inch (2.5 cm) of water per week and prefer six hours or more of direct sun each day.
- Spacing: 24-36in (60-90cm)
- Exposure: Full Sun – 6+ hours direct sun.
- Fruit weight: 6-8oz (170-226g)
- Days to harvest: 63.
- Growth: Determinate.
Do Early Girl tomatoes taste good?
The globe-shaped Early Girl is an early season tomato, usually around the size of a tennis ball at full maturity. Bright red, smooth-skinned and slightly flattened in shape, the Early Girl tomato is meaty and can be quite sweet and concentrated in flavor.
What does Epsom salt do for tomatoes?
Late in the season use an Epsom salt spray to increase tomato and pepper yield and keep plants green and bushy; early in the season add Epsom salt to the soil to aid germination, early root and cell development, photosynthesis, plant growth, and to prevent blossom-end rot.
How do you increase fruit size in tomatoes?
Hand thinning of tomatoes on the end of a truss ensures more evenly sized, larger fruit. The use of growth regulators such as auxins at anthesis can stimulate fruit set, and increase fruit size especially under low light and low temperature conditions.
How do you increase yield on tomatoes?
When planting, give tomatoes an early boost by working a little fertilizer into the soil in the planting hole so roots have easy access. Try adding blood meal, bone meal, worm castings and powdered eggshell when planting. This mixture provides a quick, water-soluble nitrogen source (blood meal).
What are the parent plants of the Early Girl tomato?
In the case of Early Girl, which currently in fact is called Early Girl Improved, has as one parent a potato leaf cultivar that is similar to Matina and some other early season, potato leaf types.
What type of tomato is the Early Girl?
globe-type F1 hybrid
The Early Girl tomato is a medium-sized globe-type F1 hybrid popular with home gardeners because of its early ripening fruit.
Is Early Girl an heirloom tomato?
Early Girl Tomatoes are not heirloom tomatoes – they are modern hybrid tomatoes. The Early Girl tomato variety is a recent introduction that was bred in France in the 1970’s. Furthermore, Early Girl plants grow from F1 hybrid seed. Early Girl is not an open-pollinated variety (a requirement of heirloom tomatoes).
What is the best tasting tomato?
Brandywine Tomato
The Brandywine is perhaps most commonly named as the best-tasting tomato variety. It has the perfect balance of sugar and acidity, with that superb old-fashioned tomato taste. Growing conditions can affect the flavor quality more than some other varieties on this list.
Are Early Girl tomatoes self pollinating?
Tomatoes are self-fertile, which means each flower can pollinate itself. Nevertheless, the presence of bees and/or wind dramatically improves pollination by nudging the flowers just enough to help dislodge the pollen from the stamens. Bumblebees are especially good at this.
What is the best and easiest tomato to grow?
Cherry Tomatoes are the easiest tomatoes for beginners to grow. They produce crop after crop and have very few problems!
Is Early Girl bush tomato determinate or indeterminate?
The determinate vines form strong bushes perfect for containers. Bush Early Girl bears a surprising number of delicious tomatoes in a small garden or a pot.
What time of day is best to harvest tomatoes?
Pluck your tomatoes from the vine in the early morning when the tomatoes are still dewy. Many garden enthusiasts and farmers state 9 a.m. as the most ideal time. 9 a.m. is perfect because the sun has not had time to warm and dry out the tomatoes.
Justin Shelton is a professional cook. He’s been in the industry for over 10 years, and he loves nothing more than creating delicious dishes for others to enjoy. Justin has worked in some of the best kitchens in the country, and he’s always looking for new challenges and ways to improve his craft. When he’s not cooking, Justin enjoys spending time with his wife and son. He loves exploring new restaurants and trying out different cuisines.