[Joe Hicks]

Hi, has anyone experimented with topping tomatoes after the first truss or two/three to get earlier crops? I tried it last year with some beefstake varieties and it was quite effective. So this year I'm planning to top some plants very early and leave others (topping at the more usual time or not at all) to have a mix of early and normal fruiting plants, both for beefstake and cherry varieties.

I found it especially useful for forcing beefstake varieties to fruit earlier when I also removed all but two or three fruits as they were developing. Obviously, you need quite a few plants for it to make sense though.