A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum The Tomato Forum Pruning tomatos?

I've been reading about how and when to prune tomatos. one site says pruning will produce more fruit, another says less fruit. this year my maters are lined up on the 'entrance' side of my garden. I thought I'd prune to make it easier to get in and out. I also thought I'd try some fall tomatos this year and I'm thinking if I keep them pruned it will be easier to get a healthy cutting. Whatcha'll think? and do you break off at the joint or clip with scizzors? I read about both techniques. (and any other questions I'm not thinking of since I've never done it. ha ha)

I don't prune mine because I think the extra foliage helps the plants produce more energy. Everyone has an opinion about pruning or not, staking or not...I think it must not make a tremendous amount of differece. I think it might be related to what region they're grown in, but overall, it's a personal choice. I've even seen one argument that the plants only need a few leaves once they set fruit...I don't buy that, but who knows. I know that some greenhouse plants are pruned...probably so they can be trained onto strings or stakes more easily.
It likely can't hurt at all to prune to contain their size, and to get cuttings to root, and if that actually gives you more and better fruit, all the better!
One thing I'm not sure of is whether pruning is done more with determinates than indeterminates...commercial producers mainly grow determinates, so that may make a difference.

Ciao Cricket-

The reason I don't prune is because it creates an open wound on the plant, an entryway for unwanted bugs and disease. Tomatoes grow wild and produce a whole mountain of fruit, so I see no reason to prune. I actually slapped the hand of my neighbour, Tony, when he came over and in typical male Italian fashion, had to tell me I was doing it all wrong as he reached into my tomato bed to snap off a sucker. He was convinced I'd get lousy yields, but trust me, I'm up to my eyeballs in tomatoes come August and over the stove canning until late October.

ha ha ha........got a visual of the hand slapping!

I don't prune for several reasons. First I don't do things unless I'm convinced it is needed. Also here we have such strong sun we get some sunburn on sparse foliage plants the way it is. If you cut off a bunch I feel it will only get worse. I'm like Julianna I have more tomatoes now and give many away and at times still have some go to waste so why would I want to put in more work to grow more. I really don't feel I would though. This is just my experience from 40 plus years of growing in this semi desert enviroment. JD

hhmmm...three negative responses. maybe I'm already 'doing it right'.

Cricket I won't say any way is right or wrong. What is right for me under my conditions may not be for another under theirs. I know a local greenhouse who grows tomatoes. They remove the leafs and side stems from where they have been picked. Leave them till they are picked. I can see this. But theirs grow a lot longer in length. They lay the part down where they trim off the leafs. I have studied this and can see no practical use in it for a backyard gardener or even a truck gardener. And I'm always trying new things. But haven't seen any possible benefit in this practice for me. And if you try it I would only try it on one or two and see how it goes. Let us know. I'm a curious one. Best of luck. JD

my DH's great aunt used to 'prune' her 'maters.

--she would take out what she refered to as the 'suckers'. the extra limbs.--

these were the smaller runners that came out from the main limbs.? confused??
me too.

I always took it to mean this;--*my example*
if you have a main limb coming out from the trunk--, say one that you have the 'fruit' leads coming from---that one is a main stem.--now between it and the trunk, kinda sticking up in the 'crook' of the 2, there may be a smaller limb coming out. This is what she refered to as a sucker.---she would take it out.--she contended all it did was take the nourishment away from her 'fruit', and the rest of the plant.
---just me reporting what was told to me.--
but since these limbs bore no tomatoes, I saw no harm in removing them.

I always remove suckers or any dead or dieing discoloured leaves. When flowering starts I limit the amount of flowers to get the set fruit to grow faster because I have a very short growing year - I even will remove small under developed one to allow the bigger to mature... Most tomatoes do not ripen on the vine in Calgary because of the short season.

Yes I know several who remove suckers. And I can see their reasoning. They contend that it makes the other tomatoes bigger. I leave them and have found although mine might not be as big with the added tomatoes from the suckers I still get as much if not more total production. But to me removing suckers is different from pruning the leaves that some promote. And in a greenhouse they remove any suckers but leave the leaves and stems where there is currently tomatoes and only remove where they are done. At least that is how the local grower does it. JMO

well, I guess i'll try it on just a couple of the plants that are right by the entrance. that was what sparked my interest in pruning in the first place - to make it easier to get in and out of the garden. thanks for all the opinions and advice. this will be an interesting experiment.

Well, cricket, pruning to give yourself room to get around can't hurt a thing, you can see that there are plenty of opinions about fruit size, etc., but this issue is convenience, if the plants have everything they need, they'll produce, they'll never notice the difference.

Doesn't hurt to try both ways. I grow greenhouse tomatoes and last year I pulled as many suckers as I could find, had a good yield. This year I'm going to try some both ways. Good luck with your tomatoes and enjoy them, we can't wait for our home grown tomatoes around here.

I haven't read all the posts for this thread but will go ahead and input to this one about suckers. There are a couple of things I think about where suckers are concerned:

1. Do I want to deal with an unruly plant? The suckers grow out and go all over the place. They can produce fruit if left alone long enough and allowed to go their merry way. But dealing with tomato vines going harem scarem is a real pain. If I don't have the time and space to allow a 'jungle' to grow, I snap them off. Whether it helps retain 'energy' for the primary plant, I can't say. For my purposes, it keeps the plant manageable.

2. Do I want some more plants? Suckers can be rooted. My sister and I have rooted many fruit-bearing tomatoes from suckers. If I want to do that, then I leave the suckers alone until they're just about the size of a small tomato plant like you might see in the nurseries at the beginning of the season. Then just break them away as close to their 'source' as possible and stick them in some good soil and keep them moist but not saturated. They'll develop roots and eventually a full plant. We've never used anything like root-starter so that's not a necessary part of the process in order to get a good plant.

thanks for all the responses on this. I was out in the garden the other day and was looking to see if any had suckers yet. I couldn't decide if what I was looking at was a sucker or not? gonna have to back and look at the diagrams I found before on the internet.

A sucker is a little branch that starts growing where the stem and stalk meet. Your plant stalk and stem make an 'L' shape, the sucker grows in the middle.

[cricket]"Really hating dogs at the moment "

What's up with the hating dogs? :)

I have a demanding dachsund that I have a love/hate relationship with. LOL

that was tamara, not cricket

Yup! that was exactly what I was seeing wondering if it was a sucker or not. thanks a lot! you saved me a 'google trip'. he he

I went back and skimmed the responses on 'snapping' off suckers. couldn't find who said that...maybe more than one of you? anyway, I tried snapping one off yesterday afternoon and it just bent. forgot all about it, actually now I need to run out with the scizzors and get a clean cut so I don't damage my plant. not getting the snapping off thing. I bent that sucker every way and no snapping.

I catch them when they are real small, that way you can just pinch them out.

I'm no expert, all I know is that the more neglect my tomatoes get, the more deluged with tomatoes I am.
I plant them where they can make all the mess they like, sprawl, crawl, you name it.
And I wind up begging people to take tomatoes (but loving it and feeling very proud).

Yup....pruning gives gives less but larger tomatoes. It's a quality versus quantity. Here because of my short season. I have to cut the tops off my tomatoe plants by the middle of July so that the rest on the vine has time to ripen (and that's cherry tomatoes)

many people may already know this, but I only learned this last year so I'll share it. tomatoes freeze really well. I never would have thought so. seems like they'd explode, but they don't. you can't thaw and slice, but they are still great for cooking with.

I'd have to agree with Dave here, this is the way I was taught to grow tomatoes and I couldn't even think about pruning one