tomato pruning 101

oh la la lookie what we learned

With tomatoes, we want to maximize the efficiency of photosynthesis and minimize the risk of disease. This is best accomplished by ensuring that each leaf has plenty of room and is supported up off the ground. When a tomato plant lies on the ground, or when its growth is extremely dense, many of its leaves are forced into permanent shade, greatly reducing the amount of sugar they produce.

If a leaf uses more sugar than it makes, eventually it will yellow and drop off.A pruned and staked plant will produce larger fruit two to three weeks earlier than a prostrate one.

A properly pruned and supported single-stem tomato plant presents all of its leaves to the sun. Most of the sugar produced is directed to the developing fruit, since the only competition is a single growing tip. The result is large fruits that are steadily produced until frost. If more stems are allowed to develop, some of the precious sugar production is diverted from fruit to multiple growing tips.

Fruit production, although slowed, never stops. The result is a nearly continuous supply of fruits throughout the season. In general, more stems means more but smaller fruits, which are produced increasingly later in the season. (This is much less applicable to determinate plants, due to their shortened growing season and better-defined fruiting period.

As a tomato grows, side shoots, or suckers, form in the crotches, or axils, between the leaves and the main stem. If left alone, these suckers will grow just like the main stem, producing flowers and fruit.

Suckers appear sequentially, from the bottom of the plant up. The farther up on the plant a sucker develops, the weaker it is, because the sugar concentration gets lower as you move up the plant. On the other hand, side stems arising from below the first flower cluster, although stronger, compromise the strength of the main stem.

For a multi-stemmed plant, your aim is to have all stems roughly the same size, although the main stem should always be stronger, because it has to feed the entire plant for the next five or six months.

RULE 1
Get plants off the ground.

RULE 2
Give plants room.

RULE 3
Never prune or tie plants when the leaves are wet.

Yea so i stole this directly from an awesome site that I used to chop up our tomato plants..

http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/pruning-tomatoes.aspx

check it out

**you can see a leeeetle baby sucker  in the axil of this stem- we’ll pinch it off with our fingers when it gets big enough to grab.

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