Check out my new tomato plants.
They’re actually not new, they’re suckers I pinched from my other plants.
My first year gardening, I sent my parents a photo (below) of my tomato plants and my dad took one look and said, “Amanda needs to get rid of those suckers.”
And I responded, “What are you talking about?”
How did I miss the sucker thing? I’d never heard of them. No one talks about suckers. Or does everyone else know about them and somehow I missed it?
This is a sucker, they grow between the stalk and leaves. They’re called suckers because they suck energy from the tomato plant. As soon as they appear you can just pinch them off.
If you miss some it’s not a deal-breaker. Your tomato plant will be fine and will actually produce more tomatoes, but they’ll be smaller.
There’s even a sucker in the photo I posted of my very first green tomatoes.
This is a sucker I didn’t pinch, so it grew into a full-blown stalk.
Earlier in the month my dad showed me some suckers he pinched and then planted. Who knew you could do that? So when I got home I pinched some suckers and stuck them in dirt.
So now these suckers are working for me. I have eight new tomato plants, and hopefully long long long tomato season.
color me impressed!
[…] This year our garden is more of an experiment than ever. It’s always an experiment, but this year the curve ball is that we’re having a baby right smack dab in the middle of growing season. That means Tom will be in charge of watering, weeding, chasing away chipmunks and pinching suckers. […]