Determinate tomato plants should never be pruned, as this will severely limit the number of blossom sets the plant can produce, thus reducing the number of tomatoes on the plant.
However, an indeterminate variety will continue to grow and will keep producing fruit for the entire life of the plant, or up until frost. Each new set of blossoms will grow farther up the vine as the plant grows. Indeterminate tomato plants also require a bit more care to keep the plants manageable in the garden.
In order to keep these big plants from sprawling all over the ground and creating an impenetrable mass of foliage, indeterminate tomato varieties should be pruned and trellised. A tomato plant that is restricted to producing on only two to four main stems will still produce plenty of fruit and the tomatoes will tend to grow larger than those on an unpruned plant.
To prune an indeterminate tomato plant, simply pinch off the little shoots, or ?suckers? that grow out from the main stem in the crotch between the stem and each leaf branch. Each one of these suckers can grow to become another big stem and would grow its own tomatoes and eventually grow its own suckers. But you don?t want your tomato plant to waste time and energy by growing all those suckers. By pruning off most of them, the plant will devote more energy to producing ripe, juicy tomatoes.
Since you?ll want more than one main stem for tomato production, allow the suckers nearest the bottom of the plant to grow. These will have more blossoms and will be easier to trellis than suckers that sprout higher up on the plant. Pruning will also improve air circulation through the plant which can help prevent disease problems, especially in humid weather.
Go to the next page for the final section
[nextpagelink][/nextpagelink]
