Favorite Pruning Method?

[SueCT]

I also want to mention that it looks from the pictures like AKMark is growing in a greenhouse, not an outdoor garden, and I am not sure if you are also growing hydroponically? Anyway, conditions are very different not just in different parts of the country, but from a greenhouse, to an outdoor garden, and backyard garden, growing not in pots but in the ground. Just ask Alittlesalt about the adjustment required to go from one to another just between planing in the ground and planting in containers. So consider the conditions and climate someone is growing in also when you evaluate what might work best for you. There is no harm in trying several different ways, either, as most of us have.

[slugworth]

I have used the godfather 1 method of cheesecloth tents in the past to avoid sun-scald.

[Christa B.]

I am also in southwest Ohio! I prune the lower branches off and an occasional sucker where the foliage is extra thick, plus any diseased leaves. Most of my suckers stay on the plants. This year I am trellising some of my tomatoes up cattle panel arches. I usually trellis using the Florida weave method with t post stakes. Once the plants get a couple of feet taller than the post they fold themselves over the top string, all that thick foliage is where things get very blighty. I am hoping the arch trellises will help with that, they will be able to grow as tall as they want without folding over. One year I single stemmed a couple of plants and both of them got early blight and septoria anyway, then they both died. I rarely completely lose a plant to disease. I am sure it works well for some people but I am personally not a fan. Good luck and I hope you find something that works well for you.

[jtjmartin]

Nothing like pruning, chemical use, and treated lumber to stir up some strong opinions!

[AKmark]

Originally Posted by gorbelly

It's great for areas with short growing seasons or 2 short growing seasons. It also works for commercial settings, greenhouses, etc.

Actually it is best for super long seasons like mine which run 8 months. We pull out 20 foot vines at the end of the year, many harvested trusses. By using overhead support you can lean and lower your plants inside or out as Bill described. After trying most methods from no prune to single stem, and weighing results, we ended up following the math.

[zendog]

I'd suggest personality of the gardener is a factor as well, at least for me.

Before going grafted/single stem for my heirlooms, I would try to be disciplined in my prunning to keep things under control and open, but inevitably some suckers would get away from me, set flowers or fruit and I'd think well I let that one more go. By the end of the season (or well before) things were too dense and disease hit. I'm in a hot humid area, growing in a community garden that is home to every disease and pest I've ever heard of. Plus with limited space and dreams of growing many varieties, the early end of the season was pretty inevitable.

Grafting definitely helped with plant survival, but I think going to single stem helped at least as much. It gave me a very rigid strategy so that I didn't make any excuses. Even if I'm away for work or vacation and things get ahead of me, I stick to me "see a sucker, prune a sucker credo". I've even cut out suckers with set fruit, although it pained me.

So I guess it might be the weakness of the prunner, not the strength of the method, but either way it gives me a no-excuses approach that has helped enormously.

[AKmark]

Originally Posted by gorbelly

It's also important to remember that, yes, you can crowd more plants together when single-stem-pruned, but many tomato varieties still require some root room to be happiest. Having plants that close together comes with the drawback of crowded root systems.

I think these sorts of tradeoffs are another reason why the situation is ambiguous enough that nobody's really been able to 100% determine that pruning is better than not pruning or vice versa.

Pretty sure you'd get different outcomes for each variety, too.

I have grown about a 1000 varieties, some of course taste better to me, but they also tend to taste good to the masses also. We used to grow outside in dirt in Indiana, then raised beds in AK, then giant pots in AK, then composted giant pots in AK, then 10 gallon, 6, 5, 4, 3. Taste is rarely affected, even when I grew Brandywine in a 4 inch container. My two fruit off the first truss were excellent.

[tryno12]

Thanks for the method to clone Slugworth, On another subject will the tops taken off an indeterminate plant say 4' tall hurt the plant - just trying to keep the plant from overgrowing everything...........
Pete

[slugworth]

snip away.
I had an accident and a plant got decapitated,indeterminate type and I stuck that in the soup to keep it going.
Same container as white strawberries to keep it company.
I have some still in the house I may top before I even put them outside,
to double my supply. 8 plants of a huge plum type italian tomato.

[tryno12]

Yo, like my Cherokee Purple and Big Cheef's next to the house I may decapitate them and start them in the potting slurry for a late crop.............
Thanks for the info!! any fert in the slurry??

[tryno12]

Slug, i was in Lake Katonah, NY till i was 6 yrs. old (1956) - near you??
Pete

[slugworth]

Originally Posted by tryno12

Yo, like my Cherokee Purple and Big Cheef's next to the house I may decapitate them and start them in the potting slurry for a late crop.............
Thanks for the info!! any fert in the slurry??

no fert since it is just a temp resting spot- like limbo.
Technique comes in handy if you break a branch off or to repair storm damage.
A must for those one of a kind plants or mutants.
I had multiple cotyledon seedlings of oregon spring and speckled roman I am
cloning to grow those out.In the past I noticed they have more foliage during their
growth cycle.
A 4th of july clone is approaching it's 1 year "birthday" in and out of the house; for
people wondering about the lack of taproot performance.
No worry about true to seed since it's a clone of the mother plant.

[slugworth]

Originally Posted by tryno12

Slug, i was in Lake Katonah, NY till i was 6 yrs. old (1956) - near you??
Pete

I am on the ct shoreline and that cool breeze is murder.
good thing I have some plants in cement blocks.(2 hole stacked 3 high)
helps fight BER

[PaulTandberg]

I don't prune determinates.

Indeterminates are entirely different kettle of fish, er... plot of plants?. Over the years I have come to the realization that indeterminates and I don't share the same goals.

My indeteminates seem to think that they are still growing somewhere in Central America and have all the time in the world to cover as much ground as they can dropping their seeds early to late hither and yon.

Me? I've got a eight to ten week window to eat sweet vine ripened tomatoes in and I'm not about to let my plants waste their time and mine by allowing them to embark on a doomed nine-month journey predicated on covering their patch of the jungle with as much of their progeny as possible.

They might think they know what they are doing. They don't. So I put a stop to their lofty plans with my pruners and push them to concentrate their fruiting energy into a narrow North Dakota window, a window that opens late and shuts early.

I stake in the garden, string in my little greenhouse. I do allow some extra leaves on stubby branches to develop for vigor and shading, but I don't allow these extra stems to flower or fruit or grow beyond a certain point (Missouri Pruning?)

[gorbelly]

Originally Posted by SueCT

I also want to mention that it looks from the pictures like AKMark is growing in a greenhouse, not an outdoor garden, and I am not sure if you are also growing hydroponically? Anyway, conditions are very different not just in different parts of the country, but from a greenhouse, to an outdoor garden, and backyard garden, growing not in pots but in the ground. Just ask Alittlesalt about the adjustment required to go from one to another just between planing in the ground and planting in containers. So consider the conditions and climate someone is growing in also when you evaluate what might work best for you. There is no harm in trying several different ways, either, as most of us have.

Trying different things is great. I experiment all the time.

Telling people you're 100% going to get maximum yield if you do it [X] way is an oversimplification. Especially if you have an 8-month growing season in Wasilla, AK, which means it has to be a greenhouse environment and very different from growing in the ground outdoors in SW OH.

There are so many factors involved: climate, methods, personality/goals/priorities of the gardener, etc.

Try single stem pruning. Try no pruning. Try everything in between. See what works for which varieties in YOUR garden when YOU grow tomatoes.