single stems versus bushes

[MarlynnMarcks]

Some people prune their tomatoes to a single stem. Others let them grow bushy. Which makes more fruit?

[b54red]

Generally the more stems the more fruit. I am trying a fairly large bed of only single stem plants this spring to see how they do. I know some of the varieties I am doing this to actually perform better with two or three stems because of their open pattern and lighter foliage cover; but I just want to see how they do getting the benefit of being the earliest tomatoes set out. The heat should be less intense and so it may work out good. Always in the past my first bed planted in the spring is usually double stem or even a few with three stems all being supported by drop lines from a 7 ft tall horizontal bar.

I planted a single stem bed last year in May that produced only half the number of tomatoes that the double stem bed did that was planted in April. The difference was that I had nearly twice as many tomatoes planted in the same amount of space so it worked out pretty good except for the varieties that had more sparse foliage. I found pruning and lowering the vines much easier with the single stem plants and hope they will have decent production this year. I will probably still plant most of the plants that go out later as double stem plants in order to provide more foliage cover for the tomatoes in mid to late summer.

The biggest advantage I found with the single stem plants besides the ease of handling them was better disease control especially with gray mold on the black tomatoes. The biggest disadvantage was with the few plants that had insufficient foliage coverage to prevent sun scald late in the summer.

Bill

Bill

[Ed of Somis]

I kind of wondered myself about sunburned fruit on the single stem plants. It doesn't seem like too much shading would be happening with one stem.