Prune or not...a.k.a. to beat a dead horse

Anthony_Toronto · February 7, 2016

After weighing in on the discussion of apparent differences in success of Brandywine Sudduth in the north vs. the south, I'm wondering if the results I'm seeing from no pruning might be impacted by my shorter growing season. For the last 4 or 5 seasons I have done almost no pruning, primarily as a result of what I've read here. Tough when using bamboo stakes, but I managed to get 25 or so indeterminate plants growing, as I had previously. Prior to that I had always done some pruning (or some ripping off of stems that required too much work or too many stakes...or used 'Missouri method' of pruning on excess side stems, pulling off the growing tip when stems were about a foot or so long, under the assumption that the leaves on the stem would still feed the plant). Aside from 1 or 2 early seasons (maybe 2003 and 2004) my pruning was not excessive, and most plants still had 5 or 6 primary stems with some additional side stems. With no pruning several plants had 10-12 primary stems coming off the main stem, again with some additional side stems.

However, I can honestly say that after 5 years of no pruning, the only difference I have seen is fewer large tomatoes, and fewer tomatoes overall. I was looking at pictures of my harvest from 2008, not a particularly good growing season up here, and I'd say it was definitely more than double the average that I've got in the last 5 seasons. Not only that but visiting gardens of others who did do more pruning (probably too much pruning), they seemed to have larger tomatoes and more tomatoes. I know the opinions on here and I know most will just blow this off as due to some other reason or due to me being mistaken about how many tomatoes I've been harvesting, but this year I'm going back to doing more plant management, just to see how it goes. The reality is that I could probably have one stem per plant and get more than enough for myself so if it doesn't work the only ones that will suffer is my many garden groupies who are already asking me when they'll get tomatoes from me!!

If anyone has tried pruning vs. not pruning over several seasons I'd like to hear about their results, especially if anyone has experienced what I have. And fuller bushier plants obviously leave more room for developing foliar diseases, but that doesn't seem to account for what I've seen.

February 7, 2016	#1
Anthony_Toronto Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Toronto Posts: 413	Prune or not...a.k.a. to beat a dead horse After weighing in on the discussion of apparent differences in success of Brandywine Sudduth in the north vs. the south, I'm wondering if the results I'm seeing from no pruning might be impacted by my shorter growing season. For the last 4 or 5 seasons I have done almost no pruning, primarily as a result of what I've read here. Tough when using bamboo stakes, but I managed to get 25 or so indeterminate plants growing, as I had previously. Prior to that I had always done some pruning (or some ripping off of stems that required too much work or too many stakes...or used 'Missouri method' of pruning on excess side stems, pulling off the growing tip when stems were about a foot or so long, under the assumption that the leaves on the stem would still feed the plant). Aside from 1 or 2 early seasons (maybe 2003 and 2004) my pruning was not excessive, and most plants still had 5 or 6 primary stems with some additional side stems. With no pruning several plants had 10-12 primary stems coming off the main stem, again with some additional side stems. However, I can honestly say that after 5 years of no pruning, the only difference I have seen is fewer large tomatoes, and fewer tomatoes overall. I was looking at pictures of my harvest from 2008, not a particularly good growing season up here, and I'd say it was definitely more than double the average that I've got in the last 5 seasons. Not only that but visiting gardens of others who did do more pruning (probably too much pruning), they seemed to have larger tomatoes and more tomatoes. I know the opinions on here and I know most will just blow this off as due to some other reason or due to me being mistaken about how many tomatoes I've been harvesting, but this year I'm going back to doing more plant management, just to see how it goes. The reality is that I could probably have one stem per plant and get more than enough for myself so if it doesn't work the only ones that will suffer is my many garden groupies who are already asking me when they'll get tomatoes from me!! If anyone has tried pruning vs. not pruning over several seasons I'd like to hear about their results, especially if anyone has experienced what I have. And fuller bushier plants obviously leave more room for developing foliar diseases, but that doesn't seem to account for what I've seen.