Well, SRS, the tomato plant will send up branches between branches that won't bloom much but take alot of the plants strength... If you hold up three fingers and think of them as branches on yer plant then if you take out the middle one, that is called suckering... Now if yer plant is up like 3 or 4 feet tall then those middle branches will havr some size to them and your need to cut them out with pruner sheers... You might end up taking a 1/4 of each plant but yer plant will produce some fine fruit that way 'cause more of yer nutrients from the roots are going where it's supposed to go...

Another ol' trick that works is to go fishing the day you plant yer tomato plants and put a bluegill in the hole first, then a little dirt on top of the bluegill and then plant the tomato on top that... The bluegill will feed the plant for the entire season...

Yeah, kat... The cherry tomato is the earliest to make fruit... We grew all our tomatoes from seed this year but didn't have any for the cherry tomatoes but, as per usual, we have several stray tomato plants that have come up in the garden so we've left a few to grow hoping that one is a cherry tomato... Once we get one we'll pull the other strays up... We had a cool May so our stuff is about 10 days behind...

BTW, Mr. Clifford says that you plant yer warm veggies after you have had 5 nights of 50 degrees or better... I always heard that the soil temperture needs to get to 55 degrees... I donno... I did hear recently that if you plant yer seedlings in cold soil that they don't just sit there waiting for warm to take off but that it retards their grown once the soil does get warm... I donno...

I do know that it's good to have smallish river rocks in the garden because they hold heat better than plain soil...

Well, time is a'wasting... Back at it... 10 days 'til our garden tour...

B~