A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 pruning tomatoes

can anyone please tell me when you need to start doing this and what parts to prune if it is needed at all. i have one determinate the rest are indeterminate. any help will be welcome.thanks

No need to prune the determinate ones. They will tend to bush up naturally. The indeterminate are the 'vining' type and you pretty much do what works best for you. Height of your stakes or trellis etc. Some people remove lateral shoots, that's the little growths between the forks of the branches, some don't. A common reasoning is removing laterals produces fewer but larger fruit. Some remove suckers, some don't. Maybe try a few of each method and see what you think.

Ciao davida,

If you're not hard-pressed for space, pruning isn't really necessary. A benefit of not pruning is that your plants will have more foliage to protect the fruit against sunscald. My plants get huge and bushy. When I say huge, I mean HUGE. I had several plants last year that out-grew their 7' stakes. What I do is just tie them up using garden twine as they grow. In the height of the growing season, I need to do this every few days or so because they really grow fast, but the benefits really outweigh the effort. I haven't heard any definitive data that suggests pruning tomato plants gives bigger tomatoes. Another way to manage monster indeterminate tomato plants is by growing them in large cages made out of concrete reinforcing wire. These cages are heavy duty and require some testosterone to build, but they last forever. I haven't had the heart to ask my boyfriend for some yet. The stakes seem to work fine and he's already providing human backhoe service by making me 2 additional raised beds for my tomatoes this year as a birthday present.

Cheers,
Julianna

Cheers,
Julianna