Extreme Tomato Plant Pruning

[johno]

Curiosity got the better of me. I went out today and pruned my tomato plants like the ones in Chucks video. They are just getting their first flowers. I noticed as I was going along that they were starting to shed the lower leaves, anyway. So it's starting to make sense that this is just speeding up nature - not so different from tree maintenance, come to think of it.

I don't know if I'll have the guts to keep pruning them that way or not. But another thing occurred to me. Even if this makes them produce more earlier, but not as much total, that'll be great, because my tomato plants quit producing by the end of July, anyway. The heat, I guess...

I did leave several unpruned, just for the sake of comparison.

I also have to wonder if there is some evolutionary reason tomato plants react well to severe pruning? Perhaps in the wild there is some creature that eats the leaves or breaks branches or something? Does anyone know about the native ecology of wild tomatoes?