swordfish

I just recently learned after watching some videos on You tube that this is important and that there are determinate and indeterminate types of tomatoes. The videos ive seen made alot of sense to remove growth that is not supporting flower sets and if done early on, will pay off in dividends of more tomatoes than if you leave the plant untouched. In the past I always thought the more vegetative growth the tomatoe can achieve the more tomatoes I will have. Im learning this is not the case. I have had monster tomatoe plants that produced very little fruit. Now that I reflect on things or, if I only new that if I were to have pruned the tomatoes I was growing last year they would have been more productive.

I am presently growing 4 different varietys of tomatoes and I have pruned some including the first flower set and some lower branches and the plant is responding already by pumping out dozens of yellow flowers above where I made my cuts. Im impressed that a tomatoe plant can be manipulated this way and until recently though you just stood back and watched them grow. Also staking correctly can contribute to higher yields as well.

So in summary ive learned two new things. Pruning and properly staking and spacing will dramaticaly increase yield and im excited to see what this season offers once I apply these principles throughout the grow. How can I distingquish an indeterminate tomatoe from a determinate tomatoe I bought from the nursery. The vendors supplying clones to the stores dont reveal this distinction, so therefore I dont know which variety im growing. Are there types of tomatoes that like to be left alone and not pruned resulting in more fruit?

So my question is do you guys prune your tomatoes or just let them go wild?

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HIGHWhatsup

on how bushy it gets with leafs and how many flowers are on it. if there is like to many leafs and not enoff tomatos and the plants not produceing by the time its big then im guna prune it.

Treadwell

Ive never heard tell of this till now but im searching youtube as i type this for more info on it. You peaked my interest. I always beleived tomatoes to be one more plant to put in my garden that just grew. You didnt pinch, snip, and bend.. just grew. Guess i was wrong.
Thanks for the direction! The garden we are putting out this year is gonna be alot bigger than past years and I think i may experiment with a few of my Beefsteaks, and Cherry tomatoes doing this. Maybe even try it with a couple of the Habenero peppers(?)

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Biorhythme

Ive heard of this before too.I saw it online after a oldtimer at a co-op spoke of doing this as one of his secrets as to how he always outgrows everyone else .It is worth stressing the piont that it must be done EARLY in the plants life cycle.If its done to late or to heavy you run the risk of the fruit blistering.

CRAZYTRAIN

An old lady gardner just told me the other day that you have to prune the little branch that grows off the stem between two other branches. She said those won't do anything but suck energy from the plant. I hope she's right because I came home and took 5 of those off my tomato plant.

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HIGHWhatsup

its true there called suckers around my place and you can solo i think use it to start a other plant if you root it and plant it can grow a new plant from it ive heard this but never seen it done or done it.

hijinks

every time that i transplant my tomatoes into a bigger pot, i cut the bottom set of branches off and bury it that much deeper in the soil. makes for a huge root mass. i also cut off about 1/3 of all the blooms when its just first starting to flower.

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CamperDon

Good morning gardeners,

I remove those sucker plants from my cherry tomato plants and have been using them as clones to continue the strain. I purchased these tomato plants back in 2007 and have been cloning them ever since ,, haven't bought another tomato plant since. And I always have enough to share with my neighbors come spring, they love my green thumb.. if they only knew how green my finger tips really are
I have in the past kept the cuttings in my grow room along with my mj plants until a friend came over and told me I shouldn't because they might pollinate the mj during flower.
I'd never heard of that so bing the scaredy-cat I am I removed the then flowering clones from my flower room. Later, after posting this many told me they wouldn't cross pollinate due to not being of the same genes.
This morning my two tomato plants are living happy in an east facing window growing tomatoes indoors since the beginning of march.. WoW, fresh tomatoes on my BLT's mmm mmmm mmmmmmmmm

Have a Great day
don

swordfish

Yes I heard that as well and im seeing a ton more yellow flowers as a result of whatever pruning ive done and even have a golf ball size tomatoe starting out.

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BCGuerillaGrowa

I've grown a wide range of tomato varieties from seed every season for the past
few years. Rarely ever starting from storebought cuttings.

This year I'm growing Rutgers , Ukranian Pear, Patio F Hybrid,
Bush Beefsteak, and Sun Sugar just off the top of my head.

Outdoors, its more important to pick the suckers once the first
flush of tomatos are beginning to ripen. On certain varities it is more
critical in order to finish the tomatos that are on the plant before
the end of the season. this especially applies to
interdeterminate plants being grown in the northern hemisphere.

Suckers are equivalent to Clones and Tomatos root much easier
than Cannabis.. Usually suckers even root without rooting Hormone
in water only.

in plain english make sure the varities you are growing suit your
geographic location as you would with cannabis.

In the northern hemisphere
the plants indeterminate plants will continue
to produce suckers which won't have a change
to fruit before the end of the season. Due to being
from parts of the world where they would be able
to produce numerous flushes of tomatoes in one season
from a single plant.

If youre able to flower a Tomato plant perpetually indoors under an HPS.
if you DO noT pick the suckers these suckers or branches
continue to produce multiple flushes of Tomatos.. as they do
in commercial greenhouses.

Typically in commercial greenhouses they will get 3-4 flushes of Tomatos
out of individual plants before chopping it.

In comparison to Cannabis, Indeterminate are equivalent to Sativas as Determinate to Indicas. Indeterminate Tomatoes are tall with long shoots like Sativas Also a lighter shade
of green. with longer ripening periods than determinates.
Determinates are bushy and stout and generally shorter and much darker
green. Determinates generally finish before the Interdeterminate varieties.