It’s rewarding moment to see the plant start fruiting.
Your hard work paid off. But, as a first time gardener you’re curious and sometimes worried how long it takes to appear red tomatoes after flowering.
In brief:
Though it depends on the tomato variety you’ve chosen, roughly it takes 5 weeks to be ready to harvest after flowering. However, you can see green tiny tomatoes within 2 weeks.
From 3rd to 5th week the tomato grows rapidly and after maturing it starts ripening.
As tomatoes are self-pollinators, wind and bees can help to pollinate flowers.
When you see the below stem of yellow flower enlarging, then probably pollination has done and within 2 weeks you’ll see green tomatoes appearing.
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Prepare purees and sauces, dry them for delicious lunches for kids, save them for gourmet style pizzas and pasta, cook delicious curries and dishes, roast them, or just bite into their juicy sweetness to get a little bite of heaven itself- you can never really run out of ways of enjoying homegrown tomatoes.
Also Read: How to Keep Birds Away from Tomatoes?
Once you have tasted a delicious homegrown tomato, there will never be any going back to the commercially grown ones, that are bred for their firmness and size, stocked up on the shelves of the supermarkets.
Tomatoes are one of the easiest plants to grow at home and have even served as the garden starters for many across the globe. From huge farms to medium-sized lawns, or even in containers.
Apart from this, you can grow tomatoes hydroponically.
Cherry tomatoes, Plum tomatoes, Rose tomatoes, Cherokee Greens, whatever your favourite variety of tomatoes be, you can grow them at home without having to put in any extra effort.
However, being a home gardener is not all about harvesting and enjoying delicious fruits and vegetables grown in your lawn or backyard. You might be overwhelmed with a lot of queries, doubts, and unknown diseases and pests eating up on your harvest.
Check this: How Long Does it Take to Grow Spinach?
While dealing with tomatoes, one of the most frequently asked questions is how long after flowering do tomatoes appear. Even though tomatoes are extremely easy to grow, questions like these can mess with your head, especially if you are a novice gardener.
Doubts like these can really be frustrating if you do not find the correct answers. Without having the knowledge of these basic things, growing your tomato plants would prove to be very dangerous for your tomatoes.
A well-informed and learned gardener is an essential element of a blooming garden. To make sure that your plants get everything they need you must be aware of all the basics.
Telling the tomato flower to fruit time lapse can be tricky even for experienced gardeners as it depends on a large number of factors.
Starting from the variety of tomatoes you have chosen to the season you have planted the seeds, a lot of things can alter the number of days you must wait patiently.
Do you know this: How deep to plant tomato seedlings?
If you are a new gardener surfing the internet with hopes of finding little bits of invaluable information and are wondering how many days you need to wait for these little red juicy treasures to appear in your plants, you are at the right place.
In this article, we have discussed the approximate time you have to wait for to finally be able to taste your delicious tomatoes. Read on to find out. But before, let us go over some basics about tomato plants and their cultivation.
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How Long Does it Take for a Tomato Plant to Bear Fruit?
Tomatoes are one of the very few fruits (You knew they were fruits, right? Well, even if you didn’t, now you do!) that are equally rich in taste and nutrition content.
Depending upon the variety of tomatoes you choose, they can take anything between 25 to 60 days to form fruits after flowering.
The smaller varieties of tomatoes ideally take about three weeks to a month to form fruits after the plants have borne flowers. Varieties like Cherry tomatoes are therefore going to be the first to bear fruits.
On the other hand, larger varieties often tend to take more time for fruit formation. Small, yellowish flowers begin to appear on tomato vines when they are about 10 to 20 inches tall.
Again, depending on the variety some plants might take a longer time to flower. At times, your plants might take up to a month to bear their first flowers. The key is to be patient and nurture the plants the best you can.
Once your flowers have shown, you can be assured that delicious fruits are not very far behind. As you have already read, they may take anything between 20 to 60 days, depending on a large number of crucial factors.
Hopefully, you now have a satisfactory answer to “how long does it take for a tomato plant to bear fruit after flowering?”
To learn more about the duration between flowering and fruit formation in a tomato plant, you need to look at the various factors that this time depends upon.
If your plants are taking longer than you expected to bear you the delicious fruits, looking at these factors might help you understand why.
So take a look to understand how your plants function, better.
Also Read: How to Attract Pollinators to Vegetable Gardens?
#1 Temperature
Tomato plants are very sensitive to temperature. They cannot tolerate too high or too low temperatures and do well only when the temperature remains within 20°C to 30°C.
In case the temperature in your region drops too low at night and rises too high during the day, tomato flowers would drop off, or just not set fruit.
If your plants haven’t started flowering yet, the process would be delayed.
To remedy the situation, you can consider cultivating tomatoes in containers and keep them indoors at night to avoid the low temperatures.
If the problem is with too much heat, try providing shade to your plants during noon.
#2 Availability of moisture
Tomato plants need a regular supply of water. These plants need the soil to be moist at all times.
You must monitor your plants closely to ensure that their beds have not run completely dry at any point in the day.
Water your tomatoes once every week in moderate weather. However, in case the heat rises, be sure to water the plants at least twice every single week.
Check this out: How Often to Water Carrot Plant?
Lack of water at any point in the growth of the plants can cause stunted development, leading the plants to shed their flowers, or just not set fruits.
Ensuring that the plants have at least one to two inches of water is essential for their growth.
#3 Tomato Variety
As you have already read, the amount of time required between the blossoming of flowers and the formation of fruits in a tomato plant depends largely on the variety of tomatoes you have planted.
Smaller varieties like the Cherry tomatoes are the earliest to be formed. They take very little time to grow, mature, and ripen.
While dealing with these tiny flavourful blasts, you would be required to wait only for about 15 to 25 days after flowering for the fruits to be formed.
On the other hand, larger varieties of tomatoes take a lot longer for the fruits to appear after the flowers have blossomed. Some varieties of tomatoes may even take up to two months to be formed.
If you are not very good at waiting, select varieties that grow and mature fast. For this, pick smaller varieties available in the local nurseries and you should be good to go.
#4 Pollination
Tomato plants are self pollinating. This means that the same plant has both male and female parts. Fertilization in such cases can happen without any external agents playing their role.
However, agents like wind and vibrations caused by bees play a significant role in facilitating this kind of pollination.
In case you notice all or most tomato flowers in your garden are dropping without forming fruits, the problem is with pollination.
To enable pollination, use artificial techniques, like stroking and gently shaking the base of the flowers by hand, or using local and colorful flowers to attract bees.
Flowers that are not pollinated cannot form fruits and would drop off in a few days’ time.
#5 Fertilizing
Tomato plants are heavy feeders. The secret to their huge storehouse of essential nutrients is the fact that they take up a lot of nourishment from the soil.
Quite naturally, your plants would face stunted growth if they did not get the required nourishment on time.
This can hinder the normal course of development and delay fruit and flower formation. To make sure your plants never have to face this, make sure your soil is well nourished. For this, get the soil tested before planting the seeds.
To provide nourishment to the plants, you can also use fertilizers.
Also Read: Are Eggshells Good for Tomatoes?
However, if you are going for an organic garden which is a way healthier option, choose organic and natural fertilizers like wood ash, homemade compost, bone meal and old manure.
You should also watch out for pests, fungi, and other diseases that hinder the growth of tomato plants.
Many a time, tomato plants are interrupted in their growth by these diseases that hinder fruit formation. For this, always lookout for signs of infestations and provide your plants with all the nourishment and care they need.
Overall, tomato plants are one of the easiest to grow and provide one of the most nourishing and nutritious fruits that one can imagine. These plants would grace your garden with their beauty and enrich your table by bringing in a host of flavors.
Nurture these plants properly and the harvest that you take home at the end of the season would be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life. The key, however, is to be really careful and vigilant.
Also Read: How Tall Do Cucumber Plants Grow?
Why do tomatoes flower but not produce fruit?
Stem below the yellow flower starts enlarging to turn into a green tomato. If you notice that stem below flower is turning yellow, then sadly pollination has failed and the flower drops.
Apart from this, temperature (too cold or too dry climates) impact the pollination and formation of fruit.
How to pollinate tomato flowers?
Tomatoes are self-pollinating plants, so you don’t have to worry about it.
Anyway, you can use your hand to pollinate by using tooth brush and shake the pollen.
Wind and bees are natural pollinators that help vegetable plants. So, you can plant some flowers in your garden to attract bees.
Conclusion
There are various factors that influence the duration of flowers turning into tomatoes.
Variety of tomato you’re growing, temperature, fertilizer and watering frequency. As mentioned above you must ensure to provide adequate resources to turn yellow flowers to green tomatoes and then ripe to red tomatoes.
In a nutshell it takes about 5 weeks or 20 to 60 days for flowers to turn fully ready red tomatoes.
Though within 2 weeks you can see unripen small tomatoes, growth take the pace from 3rd to 5th week.