Julia...this is for you!
I have spent countless hours on the internet trying to learn how to prune my tomato plants and have not found any great tutorials. This will probably be another bad one to add to the list, but I thought I would give it a try. I must say though, you don't not NEED to prune tomato plants. You can just plant them and let them grow, but to optimize growth and get bigger and better fruit...pruning can help. Also, remember that tomato plants LOVE our dry, hot weather! So don't overwater.
This is a small section of my cherry tomato plant.
See this little stem? He is bright and green and beautiful, but in the name of pruning...he can go. He does not posses any "buds", so I can remove him and subsequently give more energy to the rest of the plant.
Now if you look closely at your tomato plants you will notice these little "suckers" growing in between in the main branchy thing and a "non-budding" off shoot. If allowed to grow, it will get nice and big and produce lots of little blossoms that will result in lots of cherry tomatoes. Depending on how big you want your plant to get and how many tomatoes you want your plant to produce, you can snap these little guys off. I personally don't snap them all off...but I do remove a bunch as I want my plant to produce fewer but better fruit, and not a million little guys.
These are the little buds that will soon become nice, juicy tomatoes...you don't want to prune them!
This is post pruning...they look a little bare don't they. No need to fear, they will be big and bushy again in no time.
Sad isn't it!
But I left a good amount of these guys, so not all is lost.
And just in case you were wondering...this is how I make my bush into a tree back into a bush. Scary!
Sad isn't it!
But I left a good amount of these guys, so not all is lost.
And just in case you were wondering...this is how I make my bush into a tree back into a bush. Scary!
1 comment:
so first off, i have to thank you for spending the time it took you, out there in the blistering heat of the day, to snap photos and document the process for my benefit.
your trees are ENORMOUS! they remind me of the plants we had in vermont a lot. we had oogles of tomatoes, in about 15 different varieties there. They covered our counters and filled up all our bowls. i ate them non-stop.
i miss that.
this year i bought about 30 plants, and so far i've had 2 tiny little tomatoes ripen. they tasted good, but there just aren't loads of fruit on the bushes. and i knew that there was something about pruning to make what fruit there is better. so thank you very much! you're the best! ♥
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