tomato plant pruneing

[alleyyooper]

How many here prune their tomato plants? Does it work better than just letting them grow.

Where can some one learn the pruning method.

Al

[rainbowgardener]

It's controversial and depends on where you live and what variety of tomatoes, as well as how you stake or cage them.. Determinate tomatoes that produce their crop in a short period of time and then are done are not pruned.

Personally I prune out suckers (the little stems that grow out of branch junctions).



Then especially once the plant is getting bigger, I prune out anything that is growing in towards the center. The point is to open the plant up, keep good air circulation through the plant, especially through the center of caged plants. Cages tend to keep the leaves concentrated in small area, cutting down circulation. For those of us in humid climates that have to worry about fungal diseases, air circulation really helps.

People that stake their tomatoes vertically from rope/wire, do a lot more pruning, down to just a few branches.

[PaulF]

I grow heirloom/open pollenated tomatoes outside in the garden, use cages for support and do not prune anything but the bottom branches just to keep them from touching the ground (actually I mulch heavily with newsprint and straw) so as not to invite soil borne diseases.

[imafan26]

Like Paul, I grow in tomato cages which require more pushing branches in than pruning. Only the bottom of the tomatoes need to bared to keep the fungal diseases down. However, if you are training your tomatoes on a string, you can get more tomato plants in a smaller space but you will have to prune them. usually to one or two stems. It is more time consuming but you should get bigger fruit concentrated along the stem of the plants. It is usually pruned to one or two stems but most of the leaves come off so it is usually something that is done on tomatoes that are grown in greenhouses or massed together since fewer leaves means the fruit are more exposed to the sun and the birds.
If you train your tomatoes on a string or wire you can get more plants closer together but it requires constant staking and tying up the vines every week since tomatoes are not natural climbers like cucumbers or peas. When you take off a lot of the side branches you take off a lot of the leaf cover so the fruit on the stem is often exposed to the birds and the sun.

[MaryDel]

Pruning the suckers will give you larger tomatoes and you will get them sooner. Leaving the suckers will result in more lbs. of tomatoes. I like to prune indeterminates and just let determinates do their thing.

[Gary350]

One thing I have noticed is tomatoes grow like a vine they get 6 feet tall grow right out of the top of the tomato cage and down to the ground then across the ground about 3 feet before cold weather kills them. All the new tomatoes grow on the new growth. When the plant 4 ft tall all the tomatoes are on the whole plant. When the plant is 6 ft tall tomatoes are on the top 2 ft. When plants are 8 ft long no tomatoes below 6 ft. When plants grow down and touch the ground no tomatoes on the old part of the plant only place with tomatoes in the new growth neat the ground. If I prune the limbs the plant has no more tomatoes until the cut limbs forks and makes new growth 2 ft past where it was cut off short. These days I never prune my tomato plants. My goal every summer is to harvest 300 lbs of ripe tomatoes by the 2nd week of July when the weather is 100 degrees for the next 3 months. Hot weather kills my plants most of my plants die so I plant new plants ever 3 weeks from seeds old plants die and new plants taking their place. New plants do better in 100 degree weather than old plants and make a good crop of tomatoes until they die too then the next set of new plants that there place. This seems to be the best way for me to have ripe tomatoes on the kitchen table until Christmas day.

[SQWIB]

Depends
When I was doing Hydroponocs I was pruning a lot, now that I dirt farm and grow vertical I prune but not as much.





My plants get too big to properly manage, last years Raised Bed Tomatoes got so heavy thy broke the string and collapsed on themselves.

[ElizabethB]

It depends on the type of tomato. I practice SFG so I plant indeterminate tomatoes. I plant them deep and prune the suckers. Works great with hybrids and heirloom indeterminate tomatoes. TIP: plant the suckers (1 ea.) in 1 gallon nursery pots to root for a later crop.