Non producing tomato plants.........?

Question

I have two gorgeous tomato vines, healthy and reaching for the sky. They have numerous yellow blossoms on them, but the blossoms do not set fruit. Could this be a problem with no bees to pollinate them? Anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

you wont see blossoms and fruit at the same time - it takes a few days after the flowers die off before you see the fruits starting to grow - make sure you dont deadhead them or anything like that! trim off any sideshoots and feed weekly with a weak tomato food to encourage the fruit to grow. dont worry about the lack of fruit so far its still not too late for fruit mine have only just started fruiting. However, I imagine if you were really concerned you could try self polinating - get a small paint brush and just waggle it about inside each flower (i dont think this is really necessary though)

Answer 2

Your suspicions about lack of pollination could be correct.  If you dab all of the flowers very lightly with a Q-tip, that will do the trick.  

One other thing that will stop fruit from forming is "over" feeding.  If they get too much nitrogen, the plant will prosper and the leaves will be beautiful, but no fruit.  So check your instructions on your plant food of choice.  I use miracle grow for tomatoes and they recommend feeding every 7 to 14 days.

Answer 3

Most tomato plants won't set fruit with night temperatures below 55oF.  Also, high temperatures during the day can damage the pollen, making it infertile.  Finally, if there are few pollinators available, tomato plants will "self" (self-fertilize) if they are allowed to get a bit dry.

Answer 4

If your tomato plants have flowers on them......you will get tomatoes.

Once the flowers fall off the tomatoes fruit should start developing, but, not until those flowers fall off.

Give it a couple of weeks.  Give it lots of water.

Answer 5

We had some like that one year.  They bloomed beautifully, but we never had a tomato.  Somebody told us it was too hot.  I'm not sure that's true, but they acted like they knew what they were talking about.  Maybe the heat affects varieties differently.

Answer 6

Ours did the same thing this year - had TONS of flowers, but only got 3 tomatoes out of them.  It was VERY WINDY when they were blooming, so we're assuming that was the problem - the bees weren't around and the wind blew the pollen off of them???  Dunno.

Answer 7

shake the plants lightly every time you walk by them they are not setting the fruit so shake them it worked for me.