Pruning suckers - earlier ripening?

[Merediana]

I've just read a discussion about pros and cons of pruning suckers in a german online community and one of the pros was, that a plant with one stem produces earlier tomatoes than plants with more stems. Which would be a good reason to strictly prune late varieties in our climate.

I'm personally not experienced enough to tell if this is the truth and don't really have the space to try it out so I'm asking you

In general it seems like more people start to do "less" pruning, so more people would leave more than one singe stem but not pruning indet. at all doesn't seem to be a thing here. The most common reason for pruning that you'll read here is that the plants get less diseased because of the better air flow so the leaves don't stay wet all day long.

[ilex]

There is a prunning strategy "poda a la toledana" were you cut all suckers and cut everything above first flowers. It was used to get the first tomatoes to market.

[bower]

Interesting.. I've read that a heavy fruit load can delay ripening, and from my own limited experience I would say it's true. That's a tradeoff which is no contest for me, as long as they're going to ripen I'll take the heavy load.
But the most limiting factor for ripe time here is, for certain, tomato 'degree days'. The earlier I plant and the colder, less sunny the weather, the longer they take to flower and set.

For 'poda a la toledana' I guess you'd have a large acreage planted with the intention of pulling them as soon as you get that early crop picked. With many plants you don't need a bigger yield from each one. It's a good market strategy.

[ilex]

After the first crop you can let a sucker grow a new plant.


They used to do it because earliest tomatoes sold for a premium.

[Merediana]

I've accidentally topped my Hendersons Pink Ponderosa above the second cluster of fruits and honestly it's growing those fruits MUCH faster than all my other tomatoes. On the other hand - I've just one single plant so this could be a coincidence. Plant out date was mid may and I think one fruit is already at it's final size.
Now I'm growing out 2 suckers (they don't have flowers yet) on this plant but the fruits still grow.

[zipcode]

Generally, yes, I'd say you have more fruit early, except the first cluster (assuming you have pruned until then), which will be about the same.
I haven't seen any german garden around here that is not single stem, although not all varieties do well like that (usually smaller tomatoes with a limited number of fruit per cluster, like many older cherries or cocktail). Except sunscald there is not really much no reason not to prune.
Topping a tomato will not only make the fruit grow faster but also any flowers will magically set a lot better (I can recommend if you have big flower loss on late varieties).
One technique is to top it after like 3 trusses (or more, depends on what you know sets well in your garden) and then let a sucker grow a bit later. Can improve yield overall not only early yield.