Need to know if these are all indeterminates or determinates? Pruning guidelines are very different for each. And how tall are they now?

Otherwise I'd just pull some of the straw mulch back from the base of the plant by a couple of inches and then replace it once the plant has gained some height.

Dave

I'm sorry, Dave. They are all indeterminates. Right now, the majority of them are about 2 1/2ft.

In that case you can safely remove any branches resting on the mulch. Nothing to lose as indeterminates will just keep on growing and additional side shoots will just develop further up the plant. As it grows you can safely remove everything below the first fruit cluster.

But if you prefer to keep part of the leaf branch and just thin out the "mass of foliage" just remove any leaflets touching the mulch and leave the rest of the branch.

Dave

Ok. I removed some yesterday. Will remove more as plant grows as you suggest. Cleared a little of the mulch for better air circulation too. I also removed all the suckers while I was at it. I'm always so worried I'm going to do something wrong and I just love my tomatoes!

Thank you, Dave!

If you are using Florida weave then why are you removing all the suckers (side shoots)? You need those for more production. Are you trying to prune to a single stem or something? If so, why?

Dave

Ummm. I dunno! Ok, won't do that anymore. I am most definitely a novice!

This may be a silly question...I thought you were supposed to remove suckers so more energy goes to fruit production rather than more green production. I also read somewhere, which I could be misinformed, that suckers will not produce fruit like the main stems. Dave, could you help clarify this?

I thought you were supposed to remove suckers so more energy goes to fruit production rather than more green production..

Yes unfortunately you will read that in some places. But it, just like the claim that suckers will not produce fruit or that they "suck" life out of the plant, simply isn't true in real experience.

We have a good FAQ here called "To Prune or Not to Prune" you might want to read. And in the many discussions that come up here on pruning I think you will find that most will agree that pruning is optional and very much dependent on the type of support you are using. Put 'pruning' in the search box at the bottom of the forum page and read through a few of the many discussions on the issue for more details.

On determinate variety plants, the so-called "suckers" will be your primary source of fruit. So pruning of them is not recommended at all except for removing any branches that might touch the ground.

On indeterminate varieties a wide range of activity from no pruning at all ever if using cages to pruning to a single stem if using a single stake set up or a string stake or if planted close together for some reason.

You can do as you wish depending on your circumstances as long as you understand that pruning is purely an optional activity, is not required, and it will reduce the production per plant all other factors being equal. Whether the fruit you do get when aggressively pruning will be larger as some claim or not is debatable because of many other variables.

So experiment with a bit of different no-prune vs. prune with your own plants and see which works best for you.

Dave

I also read somewhere, which I could be misinformed, that suckers will not produce fruit like the main stems.

But it, just like the claim that suckers will not produce fruit or that they "suck" life out of the plant, simply isn't true in real experience.

Ashley - I think I read that same article last fall/winter or one just like it. At the time, I was so depressed and disappointed with myself for not having removed all those "life-sucking" suckers from my plants. I was a bad tomato mom. Later I discovered this forum and felt a whole lot better about not having pruned my tomato plants.

I'm sorry I can't seem to get a better picture, but here's a Rutgers with its first main-stem truss of blossoms beginning to open (upper right) as well as the beginnings of buds on one of its first suckers (middle left). Unless I'm all wet here, I believe buds become blossoms, and blossoms become tomatoes :) Sorry, too, that the pic is so tall. I wanted to be sure to include the area where the sucker/branch emerged.

Dave,
I think gardeners in the northern regions may very well benefit from pruning suckers because of the much shorter growing season. In our part of the country those suckers will produce many more tomatoes because once our plants start producing they keep producing for 4 months or longer instead of just having enough time to make ripe fruits before the first frost. Personally I only prune the yellow and dieing leaf branches at the bottom of the plant as it grows and let the suckers run wild!
BTW, I picked a blushing Better Boy and a blushing Superfantastic this morning, a full 7-10 days earlier than most years. This could possibly be from the plants going into a survival mode following the bad hail storm we had a month ago in OKC. I had some hail damage to every plant and lost 1 Homestead. I pruned all the damaged branches and was about 10 days before they started looking Happy again and started flowering again. What do you think?

I think gardeners in the northern regions may very well benefit from pruning suckers because of the much shorter growing season.

That may or may not be. Can't say for sure since I've never gardened there. But I know many northern growers - many of whom post here regularly - who don't prune or remove suckers. Carolyn Male in upstate New York has often been quoted as saying "pruning is plant abuse". ;)

But if they do I think I would still ask them to note that suckers don't wait to produce fruit until the plant is x feet tall or x weeks old. Like Mrs. B in WY above I have developing fruit on lower suckers which will already be harvested while the top of the plant is still just producing new growth and blooms 3 months from now. So had I removed those suckers, that fruit would have been lost.

I'd speculate that far northern growers with shorter growing seasons would be better served by topping their plants a couple of weeks before frost to force the ripening of existing fruit rather than removing the plant secondary branches now.

JMO

Dave

"Like Mrs. B in WY above I have developing fruit on lower suckers which will already be harvested while the top of the plant is still just producing new growth and blooms 3 months from now. So had I removed those suckers, that fruit would have been lost."

Dave, I agree totally and thanks for the reply.

I didn't prune the suckers on my indeterminants last year and they didn't produce much fruit, and the fruit they did produce was small. They also crowded up the interior of the plant and contributed to the problems we all were already having with late-blight being introduced in a cold, wet June via big-box store tomatoes.

This year I'm trying the option of pinching out the suckers when they're still very small. I have plenty of strong fruit-bearing branches but I also have some nice space on the interior of the plant as a result.

FWIW, all of the gardeners I know top the plants in the fall.

Well, I have to add; most of what I had already pruned was on the potato leaf toms. And then, it wasn't all that much (thank goodness!).

They get have gotten so full in the last few days! Next year I won't prune at all!

Again---thank you, Dave!