General gardening questions

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Permalink Reply by Virginia Luppino on June 21, 2010 at 7:44pm

Heirloom tomatoes are for the most part, Indeterminate tomatoes, which are vining plants with many branches.

Here is some tomato pruning info:
Pruning reduces the number of branches to one, two, or several main branches or "leaders" which will ideally be about the same size. This is accomplished by removing side shoots or "suckers" that grow in the leaf axils between leaves and the stem. Here's how it's done:

1. If you want just one leader, remove all the leaves and side shoots below the first flower cluster. As the plant grows, continue to remove all suckers from the leaf axils.

2. If you want two leaders, which is often recommended in case the main stem is damaged, leave one sucker directly below the first flower cluster. Prune all other suckers that grow on both stems.

3. For plants with three or four leaders, leave the first sucker or first two suckers above the first flower cluster. After that, prune off all new suckers.

The suckers should be removed when they are 2-3" long. In most cases, they will snap off when bent, although if the plant is wilted they may need to be pruned off with pruners or a razor blade. Pruning should be done about every week to 10 days to stay ahead of sucker development. If this task gets away from you and suckers get too long, you should pinch or cut off the growing tip of the sucker, leaving a few leaves behind, rather than trying to remove the entire shoot, which would create a wound close to the main stem and make it more vulnerable to disease.


http://www.johnnyseeds.com/t-videotomatopruning.aspx watch a video here

Permalink Reply by Meghan E. Murphy on June 22, 2010 at 9:45am

Great video! Obviously I didn't catch all the suckers before they turned into stems at this point, but good enough. I'm still not sure what to do about the height... I suppose I should get some taller stakes.

Permalink Reply by Emily Siddique on June 24, 2010 at 4:09pm

Taller stakes is probably easiest. I think ours are 8 feet (at least 7), and believe me, if this summer keeps it up, they will grow that tall! Even last year we had the same stakes, and some plants grew tall enough that when they had nowhere to go, they just started leaning on each other. However you risk branches snapping off if the get too heavy. If you don't want to hurt the current root system of the plants, you could leave the 4 foot stakes in, and then a foot away add a much taller stake... multiple plants could even make use of that.