Triffid tom

Fire

I have an outside cherry tom plant, I don't know what variety (seemingly none of the ones I remember planting). It's about four ft tall and looks healthy and triffidy.  They were probably planted into a compost/manure mix, so lots of leafage. It has a variety of ripe toms, very hard green toms and flowers.

As the temps drop, should I cut back some (maybe a third) of the branches and remove the flowers? At the moment I imagine it's around three weeks from flower to ripe fruit, but things are really slowing down. Should I up the feeding? it's in the sunniest spot I have in the garden.

It looks a bit like the below plant. x

purplerallim

Outdoor plants really only have enough time to ripen fruit already there, the flowers are just sapping strength from the plant now. Feeding is slowing down to stopping and as light/heat levels drop leaves need to be out of the way of fruit to help them ripen. Alot of growers now bring a whole truss of fruit that are no longer dark green inside on a sunny window ledge to ripen. Hope that helps @Fire.

Fire

Thanks. They are very small cherries, so I wondered if different rules might apply.

purplerallim

The only thing that matters is if they have started to turn and are not hard dark green for bringing inside any variety will work. You may well loose some to rot before they ripen, but that would have been natural loss anyway.

Fire

I meant, as they are tiny and ripen fairly fast, whether I should take remove all flowers now.

purplerallim

Yes remove flowers even cherries would be hard pressed to grow and ripen now outside

purplerallim

Take the ends off all the stems too as that will put all the energy into growing ripening all the remaining fruit

granma

You can also remove the bottom leaves up to the first truss this will allow more light.I would be tempted to remove some of the leaves from around all tomatoes trusses for the same reason.

purplerallim

I would remove most of the leaves as the only need now is to ripen fruit.

ZeroZero1

If you are left with only gree  tomatoes, you can store these by wrapping in newspaper, they will eventually ripen

tessagardenbarmy

Put a ripe banana  in a drawer or a paper bag with any green tomatoes  and they'll ripen really quickly.