Talk to me about pruning...

[Labradors2]

Well said Cole!

Linda

[SueCT]

Can't really discuss it because I stopped pruning and then became ante prune. But try it and see what you feel. I found it counter productive. I still had disease but the disease didn't cause thinning of leaves, it ended up in defoliation, less fruit and more sun scald once leaves started to be lost from the disease. When I did prune, as I was brought up, we pruned all the "suckers". Any branch originating from the bifurcation of 2 other branches. Pruned to a single stem. You won't know what works best for you and your environment until you try it for a season. If you haven't pruned before, you might try planting two of each variety right next to each other and prune only one of each variety. Keep sun, fertilizer and watering schedules the same and see what happens.

[pjhootch]

Originally Posted by oakley

Did you watch the video I posted? If not, just fast forward to minute 15 and
watch 5 minutes....so much information that you can use this year.

I did, thank you. I started out drooling over the idea of tomato tasting and wound up threatening my husband I would take over the driveway with hay bales. It was very helpful and interesting.

[pjhootch]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

In my experience, early season pruning to get the plant up off the ground is very worthwhile. But after my single stem gets a foot or more off the ground and secured to the support at two points, pruning is not just a waste of time, but counter-productive. I give myself sun scald and lower yield, as well as spread disease around with the shears.

I was pretty careful to sterilize the shears but quickly realized I could be spreading disease with my hand even.

I had one plant succomb to what looked like a mosaic virus. It was awful, but luckily no other plant got hit. I did get it into a bag and off the property as soon as I figured it out. Oddly, my purple cherokee plants seemed to be the aphid magnets last year. I do not know if they were stressed first and aphids found them an easy mark, or what made them attractive. They took more aphid damage then anything else, which figures since they are one of my favorites.

[b54red]

I doubt many people garden where disease pressures are much worse than here. This is an area that has long been heavy in commercial tomato production and for many years the plants were just left in the fields after the main pickings to get diseases and pests so naturally the problems got worse. We also have very high humidity, a plethora of soil born diseases and very hot weather. I finally had to go to grafting to avoid the pitfalls of the soil born problems in order to grow heirlooms successfully; but I doubt you will have any of those problems in your part of the country especially in containers.

I have done it all as far as pruning goes in over 40 years of growing tomatoes and some ways have been far more successful than others for me. The absolutely worst method was no pruning with our high disease pressure and high humidity; but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work in areas with less of those problems. I now use the lean and lower method with single stem pruning and love it. For me it is actually easier than dealing with all the problems of more stems and thus more dense foliage which in this climate can mean more diseases and pests. The single stem is so much easier to keep sprayed with fungicides and allows better air flow for faster drying of the leaves.

I found that when I grew in large cages that it was more productive to prune to three or four main stems keeping suckers removed and when the main stems forked removing one of them. With some of the more vegetative varieties I actually had better results in cages by keeping them pruned to two stems. This stopped the cage from filling up too densely with foliage that I couldn't spray the plants effectively and the foliage would almost never dry out in times of high humidity which down here was almost constant. Aphids will multiply in dense foliage much faster than in more open foliage but if the lady bugs and such don't take care of them I will use a bit of soapy water and Permethrin to quickly get them under control. They are far more of a problem on peppers than tomatoes. Back before I started grafting onto a very strong disease and nematode resistant root stock I found that usually the first plants to be attacked by either aphids or spider mites tended to be ones that had already started to have bad problems with either nematodes or fusarium wilt.

Sun scald is not really a problem except with a few varieties that are more sensitive to the sun like Red Barn which can easily be ruined by sun scalded fruit if no shade is available. Missouri pruning can help with plants that have more open foliage growth patterns. Just allow the sucker or fork to grow a bit then pinch out the center growth tip leaving two or three leaves to provide foliage for the fruit underneath. Try to keep everything pruned off below the lowest fruits to provide better air flow and to keep leaves away from the ground.

I would think a 25 gallon container could easily grow at least two plants with no problem. You might want to consider a fence or rack to tie the stems to so the foliage and stems from the two can overlap and spread easier. When using a tall fence or rack I used to keep my plants pruned to three or up to five stems depending on the plant.

You might be wise to do what one of the other posters mentioned and try two plants of the same variety with different pruning techniques and see which results in a more productive and healthy plant. I only visited Iowa once and it was in August but to me it seemed like May or very early June down here so I would think just moderate pruning would be fairly effective;but you need to experiment and find what works for your growing conditions. Good luck and have fun with it.

Bill

[Ricky Shaw]

In containers, 2 stem in a 10gal bag was the sweet spot for me. I tried a few bags with 2 plants in a 10gal grown 1 stem and there was not a notable difference in production.

[AKmark]

Originally Posted by Ricky Shaw

In containers, 2 stem in a 10gal bag was the sweet spot for me. I tried a few bags with 2 plants in a 10gal grown 1 stem and there was not a notable difference in production.

Ricky you are correct there is no notable difference in yield from one plant two stems to two plants single stem... until you lean and lower them. If you do two stems you split the main stalk when moving the plant, that is why they do two single stems, and that is the only reason. One plant goes one direction the other goes the opposite in a big oval. I usually pull out about 20 foot stems when it is done, we have to lower and move the top.

[Ricky Shaw]

Ahhh yes that makes perfect sense why the preference is one stem plants in bags and especially in a greenhouse setting, thank you for that Mark. In my abbreviated season of june/july/august, my plants peter out at about the 8ft height of my cages that I use to tie up the two stems, but I may try to fashion something where I can do a lean and lower system to see if I might grow one stem plants taller.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Ricky Shaw

Ahhh yes that makes perfect sense why the preference is one stem plants in bags and especially in a greenhouse setting, thank you for that Mark. In my abbreviated season of june/july/august, my plants peter out at about the 8ft height of my cages that I use to tie up the two stems, but I may try to fashion something where I can do a lean and lower system to see if I might grow one stem plants taller.

Ricky I think you will find that with a single stem and most of the plant energy going to that single growth tip that you will get a much longer stem. When I first attempted the lean and lower I allowed two stems and the plants did very well production wise but the difficulty of handling two stems was so much more difficult in the lean and lower method. For lean and lower if you allow two stems it is necessary to lean both stems in the same direction if you have more than one or two plants; otherwise it becomes a big mess running plants in opposite directions and overlapping each other. I did get more tomatoes per plant using the two stem method but I can plant twice as many plants in about the same space using the single stem method and the stems do get considerably longer. I have had some plants get over 24 feet in length in the past growing outdoors but found that production dropped off considerably once the plants got over 12 to 15 feet in length. Below are some pictures of the plants with double stems using the lean and lower method which I no longer use but it is still a productive method just much more difficult to manage.

Bill

[bower]

We have such a short season here, it is more economical to grow at least 2 stems and get the fruit set quickly than it would be to try lower and lean for the sake of tomatoes too late to ripen. So it's all about finding what suits your specific location.
Really good point from Bill about variety as well. I'm pretty sure different pruning strategies are better for some than for others. Some varieties really benefit from that single stem pruning, and produce much better that way than letting them run wild. Pruning tells them to settle down and make fruit instead of vines!

My own tendency is not to prune enough, just do sanitation pruning as needed. That works fine if you don't have the plants too crowded at all. I learned a lesson last year, managing the tomatoes at the farm greenhouse. I went one day a week to prune and tie and that was enough most of the time. But the really big lesson IMO, was the importance of picking off the dead blossoms during the weekly rounds. I've always done that in my own place, but on closer to a daily basis when doing the watering. So I learned that once a week was really enough, and boy did it keep the plants in perfect shape. When I stopped going in September, and the plants were left to drop their blossoms untended, that changed in a hurry.

Spent tomato blossoms are an ideal environment for molds. When they fall onto a leaf, the leaf gets diseased. When they fall onto fruit, you get fruit rotten. IMO cleaning up the blossom ends and blossom drops is the single most important thing you can do to prevent foliage disease, whether you prune a little or a lot. (We don't spray or use any chemicals, so this is the kind of intervention that we can work with, to handle disease pressure.)

Best of luck, whatever experiments you decide to try out.

[saltmarsh]

Bower, since you have a shorter growing season you might benefit by topping your plants.

Back during the 60's we grew tomatoes for an early market because that was where the money was. (before greenhouse tomatoes)

We pruned to 2 stems and after each stem had set 3 clusters of tomatoes we pinched the tops out of each stem. This caused the plant to ripen existing fruit about 10 days earlier. You have to continue to prune new suckers after topping for this to work.

In our case there was no sense in growing tomatoes you couldn't sell at a profit. In your case there is no sense setting tomatoes that won't ripen before frost. Claud

[bower]

Originally Posted by saltmarsh

Bower, since you have a shorter growing season you might benefit by topping your plants.

Back during the 60's we grew tomatoes for an early market because that was where the money was. (before greenhouse tomatoes)

We pruned to 2 stems and after each stem had set 3 clusters of tomatoes we pinched the tops out of each stem. This caused the plant to ripen existing fruit about 10 days earlier. You have to continue to prune new suckers after topping for this to work.

In our case there was no sense in growing tomatoes you couldn't sell at a profit. In your case there is no sense setting tomatoes that won't ripen before frost. Claud

Too true Claud, that is good advice! I often top mine anyway because of limited space. I wasn't aware that it gave a ten day advantage by continuing to prune all suckers, but that's what I'm planning to do this year at high density/single stem. Will be stoked if they're also earlier - thanks for advice!

[bower]

Another thought about pruning vs disease. One of my excuses for not pruning has always been, the fear of creating entry points for disease. And there's no doubt, I have sometimes pruned and created the entry points and the death of stems resulting, proving the point.

But there are a few rules that I follow now, to prevent disease from pruning:
(1) Do the pruning including pinching suckers on a dry day when there are some sunny hours ahead with good air circulation for the wounds to heal in a non-damp and clammy environment. Any large cuts should be made in the morning, not too close to sundown, for time to dry.
(2) Any cut that requires shears is worth dipping the shears in bleach before making the cut. I have a small tub with a lid, that contains undiluted household bleach to the depth of my snipper blades. This is the only way I've been able to make a large cut without that cut eventually becoming a site for mold.
(3) A lot of the mold diseases release their spores right around sundown. So for sanitation pruning, it is well worth it to nip off moldy leaves and enclose/dispose before that hour. The risk of pinching off a leaf late in the day is minimal compared to the risk of leaving it to release spores in the evening.

My farmer friends do tease me about the pristine plants and fruit, "Do you polish them?" etc. But seriously, the sight of a rotten wasted fruit makes me mad.

[saltmarsh]

Actually, we did carry a rag and polished them before we put them in the basket (with the stems removed to prevent damage). And packed a pink to ripe basket so the merchant had tomatoes that would last a week until we came back. Claud

[bower]

Originally Posted by saltmarsh

Actually, we did carry a rag and polished them before we put them in the basket (with the stems removed to prevent damage). And packed a pink to ripe basket so the merchant had tomatoes that would last a week until we came back. Claud

Claud, I'm so happy to hear that! It's gonna be the perfect comeback, next time I get teased! Actually in some circles, a rag is carried.... etc.