I setup an earthbox last year for the upstairs patio and placed 2 TS and had a pretty good harvest, but I noticed the plants where more bush then fruit. Since the plants grew to a good size I decided to just overwinter them directly in the box instead of planting TS seeds this year. I cut back the plants and put it in the garage for a few months giving it an occasional day or 2 in the sun when it was warm. Well early this year It started to grow back slowly, but instead of letting it grow a ton of leaves and shoots I decided to do some "Selective Pruning" to try and increase this years harvest based on a article I read a while back.
I can't recall where I read it, but there where some test done tomato plants that showed decreasing the amount of foliage will actually increase the amount of fruit in tomoto plants. Basically the article said to only allow stems and vines to grow as normal, but to prune back about 50% of it's leaves during the growing stage. Once your plant is in the flowering phase your suppose to trim all, but around 20% of the plants foliage so it can again focus on flowering and fruiting not foliage.
The theory seems to make sense as you want the plant to produce fruit not NOT foliage. I recall reading that the flowers, stems, and fruit will act as foliage for the plants photosynthesis and maintain the plants ability to grow so your not preventing the plant from growing your just forcing it to use it's energy to grow fruit and not foliage.
Well my Earthbox and 2 plants have been outdoors and slowly growing back since mid Feb and it started flowering about 4 weeks ago. Per the article I stripped it of all, but about 20% of it's leaves and since it's been a bit cold (actually slight rain this week). I also gave it weekly foliar feedings of 2-6-6 fertilizer and a weekly dose of worm tea to help it focus on fruiting. Since I prefer to foliar feed my plants I don't need a high rated fert as the plant is suppose to intake 30-50% more of the ferts and 40-70% faster. I decided to bring it back inside last week due to the cold weather and put it under a 400 watt HPS full spectrum light to give it a bit of a jump on the grow season.
The plant doesn't look like much as it seems to be a skeleton of a normal plant, but WOW I couldn't imagine how many stems, flowers, and fruit in just about every branch it can find. Each node seems to have around 5 flowers and they are packed in tight. It's funny to see because where there used to be stems and foilage there is just a node of pepper now. It seems like the ferts and the HPS light is forcing the plant to grow back stems and not foilage where it normally would have. I'm really surprised to such pathetic looking plants with so many nodes. I counted about 500 nodes between the 2 plants already and the fruit seem to be growing a lot faster as well.
Not sure if this type of excessive fruiting is normal or not since the plant is overwintered, but I have never had any of my plants show that many nodes before even the ones I overwintered last year. Here are some pics of week 4 since it started flowering last month.
I can't recall where I read it, but there where some test done tomato plants that showed decreasing the amount of foliage will actually increase the amount of fruit in tomoto plants. Basically the article said to only allow stems and vines to grow as normal, but to prune back about 50% of it's leaves during the growing stage. Once your plant is in the flowering phase your suppose to trim all, but around 20% of the plants foliage so it can again focus on flowering and fruiting not foliage.
The theory seems to make sense as you want the plant to produce fruit not NOT foliage. I recall reading that the flowers, stems, and fruit will act as foliage for the plants photosynthesis and maintain the plants ability to grow so your not preventing the plant from growing your just forcing it to use it's energy to grow fruit and not foliage.
Well my Earthbox and 2 plants have been outdoors and slowly growing back since mid Feb and it started flowering about 4 weeks ago. Per the article I stripped it of all, but about 20% of it's leaves and since it's been a bit cold (actually slight rain this week). I also gave it weekly foliar feedings of 2-6-6 fertilizer and a weekly dose of worm tea to help it focus on fruiting. Since I prefer to foliar feed my plants I don't need a high rated fert as the plant is suppose to intake 30-50% more of the ferts and 40-70% faster. I decided to bring it back inside last week due to the cold weather and put it under a 400 watt HPS full spectrum light to give it a bit of a jump on the grow season.
The plant doesn't look like much as it seems to be a skeleton of a normal plant, but WOW I couldn't imagine how many stems, flowers, and fruit in just about every branch it can find. Each node seems to have around 5 flowers and they are packed in tight. It's funny to see because where there used to be stems and foilage there is just a node of pepper now. It seems like the ferts and the HPS light is forcing the plant to grow back stems and not foilage where it normally would have. I'm really surprised to such pathetic looking plants with so many nodes. I counted about 500 nodes between the 2 plants already and the fruit seem to be growing a lot faster as well.
Not sure if this type of excessive fruiting is normal or not since the plant is overwintered, but I have never had any of my plants show that many nodes before even the ones I overwintered last year. Here are some pics of week 4 since it started flowering last month.
