To prune or not to prune?

[Gerardo]

My plants are close together so I have to trim them. If necessary, they can overlap each other and protect against sunscald.

Container growing allows you to rearrange and minimize sunscald.

[MrBig46]

Originally Posted by loulac

I must say I find it a bit irritating to see the birth of a new thread dealing with a subject that has been commented on lots of time, though I undertand that with 20,000 people being active on Tville hundreds of moderators would be needed to keep the place tidy.
On the other hand a new thread gives opportunities to learn what problems Tvillians have to face, nature isn't always all that friendly.

Worth gave me a good laugh, I can't help imagining an empty freezer in his home...

Shears or no shears ? suckers can be snapped off most of the time between one's fingers but sometimes I make a mess and lacerate the main stem when they are too big...
The problem is more tricky with the lower leaves I refuse to see in contact with the soil. I play it safe and cut them with small shears used to pick up grapes in vineyards.

I do not understand why you write just at my post that moderators should keep order. You can explain it to me?
Vladimír

[Gardeneer]

Originally Posted by MrBig46

I do not understand why you write just at my post that moderators should keep order. You can explain it to me?
Vladimír

Vladimir,
I think loulac quoted your comment with regard to using pruners / shears. He wrote :

Shears or no shears ? suckers can be snapped off most of the time between one's fingers but sometimes I make a mess and lacerate the main stem when they are too big...
The problem is more tricky with the lower leaves I refuse to see in contact with the soil. I play it safe and cut them with small shears used to pick up grapes in vineyards

.

So I would not take loulac's comment in anyway to mean to criticize you. JMO

Gardeneer

[loulac]

Originally Posted by Gardeneer

Vladimir,
I think loulac quoted your comment with regard to using pruners / shears... So I would not take loulac's comment in anyway to mean to criticize you. JMO Gardeneer

Thanks for showing my post in a correct light. Tville is a perfect field for comparing experiences, then every gardener is free to make his own opinion. Mrbig46 asked readers to give their opinions about using pruners/shears, I just gave mine without the slightest trace of any kind of criticism !

[Shapshftr]

I'll chime in here and say even though I'm not a pruner, I do have to remove bottom leaves from time to time, and I use a scissors, snip, snip. I always feel like Edward Scissorhands when I do it.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by MrBig46

And to think I almost bought a pair of fancy high priced pruning shears.

I use a pruning shears only for cutting fruit trees. On what about you?
Vladimír[/QUOTE]


Vladimir I dont understand the question.

Worth

[Gardeneer]

Originally Posted by Worth1

I use a pruning shears only for cutting fruit trees. On what about you?
Vladimír

Vladimir I dont understand the question.

Worth[/QUOTE]

Well, as I understand it, Vladimir said (that) he only uses shears (pruner) to prune fruit trees NOT tomato plants.... waht about you ?

I dont have fruit trees and I DON"T use pruner on tomato plants that much either. I use a cheap serrated scissors that I keep in the garden for general use.

Gardeneer

[bigpinks]

True that you can snap a sucker once and then 180 degrees the other way and get a clean break until they are too tough. Then I use a hand tool. I sucker a lot but still wind up with 3-5 stems on half or more of my 90 plants. I think I get bigger fruit but fewer of them by pruning. With that many plants I don't need 30-50 from each one. I mostly just give them away by the bag full. Good community spirit. Family gets a small percentage.

[Gardeneer]

Originally Posted by bigpinks

True that you can snap a sucker once and then 180 degrees the other way and get a clean break until they are too tough. Then I use a hand tool. I sucker a lot but still wind up with 3-5 stems on half or more of my 90 plants. I think I get bigger fruit but fewer of them by pruning. With that many plants I don't need 30-50 from each one. I mostly just give them away by the bag full. Good community spirit. Family gets a small percentage.

I also never use pruner or any hand tool to remove sucker. Snapping does it when done on time. I use scissors to prune the lower leaf branches.

Gardeneer

[Wedlady77]

Thank goodness for this thread. It was wonderful to see both sides of the coin. I rarely grow (in my 2 years of gardening lol) indeterminate plants so this helped immensely.

[Gardeneer]

This thread is at its 5th page. I don't remember if I have said How I do it and what is my opinion on pruning or NOT pruning.
Pruning depends on ones's gardening style and how tomato plants are supported. If you grow, for example, by stringing and layering you have to prune into a single stem and also need to prune all the leave branches below the lowest truss. Bout if you use big sturdy case and the plants are spaced generously then you can forget about pruning. Maybe except for the very lower leaf branches that are touching the soil or are to close to it and you want some air flow under the plant. Another NO pruning would be if you let your plant sprawl.
I have used stakes and small cage that I had to prune to reduce number of stems and foliage.
So generally if you allocate a lot of space/ground for your plants then you can opt no pruning or very little pruning.
No pruning is much convenient and requires less work as opposed to heavy regular pruning. This is no lazy gardener's method.

[Rajun Gardener]

I'm doing a new method of pruning now on an Owen's Purple plant in a container/self watering bucket I made. It might not be new but this is the 1st time I tried it. I let the plant grow with 2 main shoots then I let the sucker grow and make flower buds and I top that sucker. I'm letting the main shoot grow but all the others are topped after bud development. The plant is about 4' tall and today I counted 11 clusters of buds and the lower cluster have small fruit forming. I hope that made sense.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Rajun Gardener

I'm doing a new method of pruning now on an Owen's Purple plant in a container/self watering bucket I made. It might not be new but this is the 1st time I tried it. I let the plant grow with 2 main shoots then I let the sucker grow and make flower buds and I top that sucker. I'm letting the main shoot grow but all the others are topped after bud development. The plant is about 4' tall and today I counted 11 clusters of buds and the lower cluster have small fruit forming. I hope that made sense.

I sometimes do the same thing even with single stem plants; but only very early when the plant is still young. The biggest problem is those short stems frequently need support or the weight of the fruit cluster at the end can cause them to break or fall over. Another disadvantage is frequently those tomatoes are more exposed to sun scald. I usually remove the stems as soon as the fruit is picked.

The longer I have gardened in the oppressive heat and humidity of the deep south the more sure I am of the benefits of pruning for long term production. For maximum production in a short time like for canning then limited pruning is much more sensible even down here.

Actually pruning heavily reduces the amount of work and time I have to spend tending my plants. A large unpruned plant has to be supported here in the deep south because letting them sprawl is a disaster with all our pests and diseases. Even when well supported it is only a matter of time before an unpruned plant becomes fatally diseased and or overwhelmed by pests. In areas with less disease and pest pressure I am sure pruning heavily would be needed far less.

If you want sustained production you have to keep the plant healthy. If you want good sustained production late into the season you need to keep plants sprayed with fungicides down here and a well pruned plant is so much easier to spray. Another benefit of pruning is that even though you have less clusters of blooms you get a much better percentage of fruit set with a pruned plant than an unpruned one especially once it gets hot. It seems to me every year gets easier to maintain the plants the more I prune them and my workload has decreased. It is far easier for me to spend a little time doing a bit of pruning than to spend hours and hours trying to support multiple stems and caring for disease ridden plants. Since I have gone to the drop line method and single stem only the amount of actual labor involved in caring for and maintaining my plants during the growing season has dropped considerably; but the downside is it takes more work initially in the cool weather of spring to get it all set up before planting.

Bill

[timfmbhm]

Bill,
Where are you in the "Deep South"? I'm near Tuscaloosa Alabama.

[Rajun Gardener]

I know what you mean Bill. I've been stringing plants in the GH for the last 3 years and I tried it last year in a RB but I just let the plant grow and didn't prune hard so I had a jungle.