Are you tomato plants robust? Or is that putting it mildly!
There is a debate whether tomato plants need to be pruned. Although it is not an absolute must, there are advantages.
First, not all tomato plants should be pruned. Determinate varieties (Roma, San Marzano) should not be pruned. You want canning tomatoes to set fruit at one time.
Unpruned, indeterminate tomatoes will grow into a shrubby, multi-stemmed plants that will topple over. Indeterminate tomato plants, your slicers, benefit from pruning. Here are some benefits.
First and foremost, you will get larger, earlier tomatoes instead of lots and lots of small tomatoes.
Once pruned, the plants can be spaced closer together. You can grow more varieties of tomatoes in the same space as unpruned tomatoes.
Pruning reduces the number of tomatoes per plant, this is offset by increasing the overall yield.
It makes it easy to support plants using cages.
The easiest way to prune your tomatoes is to pinch off the suckers at their bases, in the axil (or crotch) of the plant, where the vertical stem meets the branch.
If space is limited, you can prune the plant to one to two main stems.
Some gardeners pinch the suckers on the lower stems and allow suckers higher up to develop and supply needed shade.
It is recommended that you prune once a week.
At the Donna Critchfield demonstration garden at the Education Village in Williams you can see a tomato pruning trial. We have 3 Early Girl plants that we pruned severely, moderately and not at all. Come and see the differences at our Open Garden, August 6, 9 to 11 AM. ■