Make way for a bumper crop of fruit with a little tomato plant pruning.
Tomato plants naturally tend to produce lots of leaves and relatively fewer fruits.
However, balancing leaf and fruit production by pruning tomato plants is easy.
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It only takes a few minutes per plant to prune away unneeded growth.
By reducing the overabundance of leaves, your tomato plants can focus more energy on growingcolorful, flavor-rich fruit.
Use these six simple tips to guide your tomato plant pruning efforts.
Know Your Tomato Plants.
Tomatoesare grouped by growth habit.
A tomato variety is classified as either determinate or indeterminate.
Determinate tomatoes grow to about 4 or 5 feet tall, stop growing, and begin producing fruit.
All fruit on a determinate tomato plant ripens within about 4 to 6 weeks.
Indeterminate tomatoes, on the other hand, don’t stop growing at a defined height.
By nature, indeterminatetomato plantsproduce more foliage than determinate tomato plants.
Start pruning tomato plants after flowers appear.
This generally happens a few months afterplacing young transplants in the garden.
Tomato plants typically begin flowering in June or July.
Pruning tomato plants in the morning after dew or overnight rain has dried off the foliage is best.
It helps toprevent the spreading of plant diseases.
Aim to prune plants when the suckers are between 2 and 4 inches long.
Indeterminate tomatoes can be pruned every couple of weeks as they continue to produce new leaves.
In general, tomato plants produce main stems and main leaf branches.
Fruit develops on the main leaf branches.
Suckers grow in the intersection between the main stem and main leaf branches.
They’re easy to spot once you know what you’re looking for.
Removing suckers allows for greater airflow, which will reduce the chance of diseases infecting plants.
The fruit that grows on a trimmed tomato plant will be more robust than on plants with suckers.
Aim to remove most suckers you see.
When in doubt, leave a sucker andwatch the outcome over the course of the season.
Then next year, make modifications to your technique based on your observations.
Thin out fruit on slicing tomatoes.
Simply snip out developing fruit, leaving the largest one or two tomatoes in the cluster.
This jot down of fruit pruning is called thinning.
Pruning tomato plants creates open wounds.
And just like when you get a cut, wounds are entry points for infections.
Wash your hands with soap and water or use a hand sanitizer frequently when pruning tomatoes.
Staking tomato plants can make it easier to prune, harvest, and care for them.
It’s also easier to spot pests that take up residence on your plants when they’re staked.
Plants will avoid being trampled by pets or critters if they’re staked, also.
