Spotting a Sucker

For those of you who already knew this, please bear with me.  It took me 40 years to get the hang of it.  But, I'm happy to say that I can definitely spot a sucker now...  and deal with it properly!

  I told you I'm a newb.  And for those of you who never heard of "newb"...  it's a gamer term for "new," you know, "new to the game."  And that's definitely me when it comes to gardening!

Anyways...

Here's a sucker:

Here's what you do to it:  Pinch that sucker!

Just in case you didn't get it...

It grows in the "armpit" of the plant.  And it will never produce fruit.  It just steals all the water from the plant and makes a lot of leaves.  It's a sucker.  It sucks.

Now, I've been telling Captain all about this for a few weeks.  I'm pretty impressed with my new found knowledge, you know.  And yesterday he came home from work and told me that his new boss grew up on a 400 acre tomato farm in Tennessee and the secret to growing tomatoes is to pinch out the suckers.  Then he went on to describe the process.  Really??

So, this tomato farm hired all kinds of hippies and migrant workers to sit out there on that 400 acres and pinch out the suckers.  Picture that.  Yeah, and if they could figure it out...

Here it is again:

Putting that art degree to work, I tell ya.

I guess it's more of the "neckpit" than it is the armpit.  Unless your tomato person is doing a cartwheel.  Like mine.  Anyways...you get the idea.

So, go out there and deal with those suckers!

Coz if you let them go too long, they'll start to look like this:

And they'll be harder to spot and it will be harder on the plant.

By the way, check this out!!!!  Yippee!  That's my cherry tomato!

Did you see the sucker that I missed?  I just noticed it.  So, I went out there and fixed the problem.  And hopefully we'll be getting some beautiful little tomatoes pretty soon!

And cucumbers...

And zucchinis...

And beans...

Yay! for gardening!!!

I love BABIES!

: )