TOMATO SUCKERS!

I’ll admit it. I’ve been growing tomatoes since I was able to say pizza sauce.  It seems they’re used to make a lot of yummy food and they’re really fun to grow.  Once your kids start seeing the little flower buds it’s just a few more days until they turn into green tomatoes. Before you know it, they turn red and you can pick them and eat them.

​Growing tomatoes is fairly easy with the right soil, water, and sunlight.  But if you want to keep your plant from getting to big be on the look out for “tomato suckers!”  No, they’re not bugs that come in and eat your crop. Tomato suckers are little branches or stems that grow between the main branches.

​The tomato suckers will eventually grow into another stem and could possibly grow more tomatoes. But they also need water and sunlight which could cause your other tomatoes to not be so big.

​They’re easy and actually kind of fun to remove.  If you see them early enough, you can just pinch them off with your fingers.  However, if they get larger, ask an adult helper to give you hand and use a pruner to clip them off so you don’t accidentally tear off a healthy stem too.