Summer Pruning

[TomatoDon]

I know we've had endless opinions on pruning, pinching suckers, and so on. It seems like different things work well for different people.

I've noticed my tendency has been to not prune hardly anything for the first part of the season, and then I notice how aggressive I am over in the summer when I do start pruning. I've started that in the last few days and have given most of the plants a good haircut. I curious to see if any of you go through this mid-season prune fest also, and if you think it helps.

I have a lot of plants, so it's hard to stay on top of pruning and sucker-pinching all through the early season. Now, however, I have (had) uite a few large branches that got so heavy that they bent severely growing out of the cage and although they had some blooms and a few small tomatoes, I never saw many that amounted to much. I ruthlessly went through recently cut these off, but all small branches that had any yellow leaves, large suckers that had no blooms or fruit, the stems that grow downward with no blooms or fruit, and basically anything I see that doesn't look useful or healthy. I'm hoping that all the energy will now go to the blooms and small fruit on branches and stems that are thriving.

I wanted to see what the rest of you are doing with your pruning at this point in the season. I'm having a stellar crop on many varieties, and probably one of the best mid-season crops I've had in several years. I've taken a lot of pictures that I'm posting on Flicker and will psate the link below. I'm adding pictures daily now, so check often for updates and new additions. I left it open, so I think any of you can post comments there too.

Here is the link to "sets" on my Flicker account.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomatodon/sets/

Don

[ubergoober]

So far the only pruning I do is just the first few bottom leaves if they become a problem for me while watering etc. I tend to pretty much leave everything alone unless something is getting in the way.

[b54red]

I have one bed where every plant has gotten too tall for me to prune. The plants are between 9 and 10 feet tall and growing up 3 ft above the trellis and sending out a bunch of suckers and forks which I know will end up falling over and breaking but I don't quite know what to do with them. I may just take my step ladder out and give them a hair cut before it is too late. The only problem is I hate to do that while the temps are so high and we are needing rain so bad. I know cutting off a lot of the growth tips will force the fruit to grow off a little quicker; but will reduce the numbers significantly.

[TomatoDon]

Well, I guess everything is relative. I guess this is a problem we all wish we had in February. And one we look forward to as soon as we transplant seedlings.

BTW...the young seedlings I set out a couple of weeks ago are doing good and should produce the last of my late crop this year.

[b54red]

I also put out some seedlings this past few days but am not having as much luck. Half of them died despite being hardened off to the point of having woody stems. Some of them have just baked in the soil the day of two after setting them out. I replanted half of them this morning and will have to replace 3 more this afternoon. The so called showers we were suppossed to get all week have failed to materialize.
I still have a whole batch of seedlings just getting started for August planting also.

[TZ-OH6]

I do a big mid season pruning, usually when Septoria and early blight start to hit the older leaves. I take those leaves off and prune out the inside of the cages, removing all of the scrawny shaded unproductive vines. The staked plants get the early season suckering, but it is easy to do that since they have to be tied up a couple of times a week anyway.

[TomatoDon]

TZ that's about the same as I do. I whack em up pretty good. It's so hot and muggy here now that I felt like it would also serve to open up some air flow to the plants. It was getting like a jungle.

I've been fortunate on disease and bugs this year. I took a gallon spray tank and loaded it a couple of times with Daconil and mild insecticide and sprayed all the plants. Haven't seen one problem due to bugs, and very little of any kind of problem overall through the season.

The only odd thing is when I planted I had two plants in the first bed that wilted up and were goners I thought. I watered them good and just as I thought they couldn't get any worse, they made a come back. Now that are the same size as the others and are producing just fine. In another bed I had BoxCar Willie, Oxheart, Cherokee Purple, and Black Krim. Other than one Black Krim every one of those 8 plants died or became so stunted that they never did produce. I have no idea why most of the early season mis-fortune was in that bed.

Am hoping to have some more Earl's Faux, Black Krim, and Purple Haze ready today.

DS

[bigbubbacain]

Originally Posted by TomatoDon

I took a gallon spray tank and loaded it a couple of times with Daconil and mild insecticide and sprayed all the plants. Haven't seen one problem due to bugs, and very little of any kind of problem overall through the season.

DS

Does Daconil mix with insectcide? If so, which one do you use? If I can combine, I'd sure do it because I've got too many things I'd like to spray and not enough days to do it!

[TomatoDon]

Bubba, I think it was something like in this picture. A multi-purpose product that touts itself as a Fungicide, Miticide, and Insecticide. I think I poured the diluted strength along with a bottle of Daconil into a gallon spray tank and sprayed it all over about 40 plants. That is the only spraying I've done this year.

Don

[TomatoDon]

As an update, I mentioned here that I whacked those plants pretty hard. I also watered them a good bit late in the evenings and sprayed the hose over the foliage as I watered. The plants seemed to soak it up within a very few minutes because I could drench a bed of 8 plants and by the time I had watered the next bed, the previous one didn't appear to have any water on the foliage. I also believe it helped cool things down in the late evening that helped the plants too. Today I gave them a good watering again and noticed how much new and thriving foliage was starting. The pruning seemed to give a new life to the whole garden. Am seeing new blooms and small fruit starting. The top half of many of the plants look like they did in mid June.

Not sure how well pruning does for everyone, but this seemed to have infused new life into my plants.

DS

[b54red]

Bubba, I sometimes mix Permethrin in my Daconil spray with no ill effects and it saves a lot of time and work. I never mix anything other than a little dish soap with my Clorox sprays.

Don I finally gave up and topped off a lot of my plants that were so tall. I still have way too much growth on some; but I am unable to spend the time on them that a good pruning will take. Oh well I've got seedlings almost ready to replace any that look like they are nearing the end of their production.

[Timmah!]

I recently pruned the lower foliage on the Brandywine bed, just so I could see what was going on down there. Lots of fruit starting to blush & that way I don't have to root around to see what's what; found one of the cats hanging out enjoying the shade they afford.

[b54red]

I had to put up an electric fence to keep my dogs out. They are worse than tomato hornworms. They remove all fruit and frequently the whole plant.

[Timmah!]

What kinda dogs you have, b54red? I watched the cats to see if they would try to play with the fruit, but the only time I've seen them have a go at anything was when a moth or something was bouncing around. Looked like one was munching on a cicada yesterday.