How do you prune your tomatoes.

[Artichoke Lover]

I want to know how you prune your tomato plants and why! It helps if you include how long your growing season is and what type of tomato you grow (determinate or indeterminate).

 

[Offshoreorca]

I grew determinate Tiny Tom cherry tomatoes and you didn't need to prune at all. I also grew German heritage tomatoes that were indeterminate and pruned here and there, but I honestly am not an expert in it and just followed guides on the internet by pinching off new growths at the base of the branches.

 

[sylviethecochin]

So pruning your tomato plants makes you get fewer, but larger, fruits. I have heard the logic that a larger tomato plant devotes more energy to foliage and less to fruit, but this makes little sense to me. The leaves feed the plant, via the magic called photosynthesis, right? I'm pretty sure foliage is an investment that pays off later. That said, there are definitely reasons to prune "suckers."

I grow both determinate and indeterminate. I "stake" them to hog wire wired to t-posts, so the plants are more two-dimensional and easy-access for spraying/clipping diseased leaves/harvest/etc.

I do very little pruning of the determinate sauce-type tomatoes, because I want a lot of them, don't care what they look like, and the smaller tomatoes have a higher flesh-ratio anyway.

I do prune the indeterminate steak tomatoes pretty hard, allowing maybe three main vines at most. Beefsteaks, or any type of larger tomato, seem to be more vulnerable to late blight, and I have problems with that, as I live in a fairly damp area. Having fewer, stronger vines seems to increase their chances of making it to harvest. And again, it's far easier to spray when there's not a tangle of vines to rearrange. The fewer vines are also less likely to hold dampness and encourage the growth of blight.