LA Times blogger says Prune tomato plants

[Dewayne mater]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home...echniques.html

This article suggest pruning all suckers and even more than this and contains a claim of "500 pounds" of tomatoes from one plant. I think this person may have been growing, and smoking, some other type of plant, but wanted you all to see it. I rarely prune and usually only remove something if diseased, so this is very strange to me.

[TomatoDon]

Well she did say, "then pruned aggressively by removing the spotted, the diseased, the deformed and the useless." I'm sure we all do that to one degree or another.

As to 500 pounds production, the grower said he did that "once" and even so that's still a lot of tomatoes for one plant. He didn't achieve that by just pruning.

[FILMNET]

50 lb maybe ? that's 40 tomatoes or more.

[TomatoDon]

I think he meant 500. I'm always skeptical of such fabulous claims. If he did get 500 pounds, I hope he saved a lot of seed that he will be sharing.

In my opinion, the writer was conscientious to try to get it right and I thought it was interesting. I especially liked the quote, “I have a rule,” Frankel says, snipping off drooping, fungal-splotched foliage from the base of one plant. “No ugly leaves.” That's basically my policy too, but with a lot of plants it is basically a practical impossibility to go through and meticulously snip off all of them. I do know when I did the heavy pruning a few weeks ago that I mentioned in another thread that the plants seem to rejuvenate and grew a lot of fresh, healthy foliage and set more flowers and fruit. As the writer said, my plants became "charmingly robust."

[cottonpicker]

agreed !!!! I judiciously prune "some" of the suckers and ALL blotched / diseased leaves. Simply put...it looks better & I think the plant is healthier for it. As for that claim of 500 pounds of tomatoes from one plant or gazillions of tomatoes....... I'd HAVE to SEE it in order to believe it.

[Mischka]

I don't prune my plants but what I want to know is - what is Sandra Bernhard doing pruning tomatoes, in the first place?

[gill_s]

Originally Posted by TomatoDon

I think he meant 500. I'm always skeptical of such fabulous claims. If he did get 500 pounds, I hope he saved a lot of seed that he will be sharing.

In my opinion, the writer was conscientious to try to get it right and I thought it was interesting. I especially liked the quote, “I have a rule,” Frankel says, snipping off drooping, fungal-splotched foliage from the base of one plant. “No ugly leaves.” That's basically my policy too, but with a lot of plants it is basically a practical impossibility to go through and meticulously snip off all of them. I do know when I did the heavy pruning a few weeks ago that I mentioned in another thread that the plants seem to rejuvenate and grew a lot of fresh, healthy foliage and set more flowers and fruit. As the writer said, my plants became "charmingly robust."

I am confused about removing spotted/diseased foliage by snipping it off. It is often difficult to remove yellowing foliage because it won't easily break off but I had understood that to remove leaves you should always break them, never cut because of introducing disease into the stem.
If you do cut do you sterilise the scissors/knife between plants? if so what is the best method?
Thanks

[FILMNET]

She does sure look like her, you are right?

[TomatoDon]

I thought something about that picture looked familiar!

Gill S, I've heard the same thing but never bought completely into that idea. I may be the village idiot, but frankly it never made sense to me how pulling and pinching off suckers and brances was better than cutting them. And what is the reasoning behind why our fingers are more sanitary than a pair of shears? Nothing about it makes sense to me. I did try it for a brief time after I read about it, but I found myself trying to break off leaves that would start a tear into the main branch and all sorts of troubles. After failing to accomplish my mission 100% of the time I finally threw out the idea and got a good pair of pruning shears and the problem was immediately solved.

I have not ... NOT .... seen one instance of shears or scissors or a knife causing damage, harm, or disease to my tomato plants. In fact I was causing noticeable damage to the producing branches by trying to pull the fruit with my bare hands. I finally quit that too. I'd try to reach in and pull a tomato and half the time I had to pull so hard it would cause another one to drop off, or split at the stem on into the branch, and so forth. That was also solved with a pair of pruning shears.

If we're going to disinfect shears after cutting off a leaf, then we might as well stand by all day with a disinfectant to keep the cages, stakes, twine, ties, and everything else sterile.

Unless and until I actually experience it in reality, and not by reading about it in therory, and until I have a mountain of overwhelming evidence proving that fingers are more sanitary and better than shears for cutting off leaves, suckers, stems, and the fruit itself, then I'm sticking with what is working well for me right now.

In fact, I'll post a picture of what I use. Notice the nice patina it's gained from cutting leaves, branches, and fruit off the vine. And all those germs haven't hurt a thing.



Thanks again to Feldon Central for the photo hosting service.

[dustdevil]

Such a worthless article. The only way to get 500 pounds from one plant would be to keep it alive for 5+ years.

[tjg911]

i agree with the idea this guy was growing pot not tomatoes! hey it's california, it's legal isn't it? oh i have a headache i need a script and it's off to the medical marijuana dispensary DUDE.

i never prune suckers, stopped doing it several years ago. it's too much work, the leaves give more shade to the tomatoes and they feed the plant via photosynthesis like the rst of the branches. it makes no sense to cut off suckers. yymv.

tom

[mjc]

Hey, in some parts of California, it is possible to have tomato plant live several years...,my father-in-law did it when he lived Long Beach.

But I'm of the 'it's too much work' camp when it comes to pruning tomatoes...there is usually just too much other stuff going on in the garden to worry about it. It didn't seem to matter all that much when I was pruning them, as a kid, so some time later, when I was in college, I stopped and haven't done so in 20 yrs now.

[habitat_gardener]

Originally Posted by TomatoDon

...I especially liked the quote, “I have a rule,” Frankel says, snipping off drooping, fungal-splotched foliage from the base of one plant. “No ugly leaves.” That's basically my policy too, but with a lot of plants it is basically a practical impossibility to go through and meticulously snip off all of them. I do know when I did the heavy pruning a few weeks ago that I mentioned in another thread that the plants seem to rejuvenate and grew a lot of fresh, healthy foliage and set more flowers and fruit. As the writer said, my plants became "charmingly robust."

When I had more time, I used to go through and cut off all the old foliage, too. One year I had a Tommy Toe cherry that got to the top of its cage, then went across 3-4 other cages. At first it looked like a bunch of bare stems with fruit hanging from the top branches. But pretty soon, new foliage started growing from the base and it filled in.

Actually, I more often break off the old leaves than cut them off. They usually snap off easily, but sometimes I have to bend them back and forth if they're not quite ready to let go. I do tend to use pruners to cut off large fruit, though.

[TomatoDon]

Once the plants get some good summer growth it's impossible to pinch off the suckers and meticulously groom them. I do the best I can when I plant them and try to train them a little as the develop, but by mid June here they are too big for that. In July I'll reach a point where I feel a big need to go through and prune off damaged or unproductive branches and whatever else that needs it. I know what you mean about pulling off leaves, but so often I've pulled a large leaf or stem or sucker or fruit anything and it starts to tear and then starts running. I picked some tomatoes today with my hands and a split started on the stem on back to another fruit. Oh well. And with our heat here this summer (heat index around 110), I've never before noticed picking tomatoes that felt HOT like these do.

[AZRuss]

I agree with Dewayne. I bet he's been pruning (and smoking) something else.