Cutting the plants back severely reduces yield, research shows
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Here's a Cherokee Carbon hybrid tomato plant, in ground
about 4 weeks. At the most I'd trim off that shoot at lower
right, but not until the plant is bigger. And maybe not even then.
This is a good producer of purple-black tomatoes, and I want all the foliage -- and fruit -- I can get. (Photo: Kathy Morrison) |
Gardening has a lot of topics that provoke strong opinions among gardeners. Near the top has to be the idea of pruning tomato plants.
Over the years I've hardly pruned my plants at all. In fact, I never did until the first year I grew the hardy and prolific Juliet tomato. I was complaining to a friend that this plant was trying to take over the entire tomato bed, and she replied, "Well you know, you can prune them."
Since then, Juliet gets an occasional haircut, but the trims come only along the bottom. And that holds true for any other plant that aims to send rampant shoots across the garden.
But prune from the top? Horrors! A fellow community gardener asked me about that just today. And why would I want to cut off the growing tip of my plants? When the heat is coming and they need all the foliage they can get?
Some community gardeners do prune extensively, to a stake or a string, and then put shade cloth over the whole area to keep the tomatoes from being scorched. This seems to me like more work and less tomatoes. And I found University of California information that backs me up. Quoting here from the Integrated Pest Management website :
"Pruning your tomatoes
"Pruning is not always necessary. However, when pruning your tomatoes, remember these main points:
"Plants with two or more stems produce more tomatoes with better foliage protection from the sun than plants with one stem. However, tomatoes pruned to one leader will bear earlier but with less yield overall. Choose the stems you want to keep and pinch out the others as they develop. A dense leaf canopy may reduce the incidence of black mold and cracking but may increase the incidence of other fruit molds such as gray mold.
"Before removing suckers or side shoots on a tomato plant, wait until two leaves develop and pinch above them." (See graphic at right for illustration.)
This science-based information likely won't change the mind of anyone accustomed to pruning. Earlier tomatoes but less yield? No, I'll stick with my full-foliaged plants, thanks very much, and enjoy my crop when it does finally come in.
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Food in My Back Yard Series
May 13: Your plants can tell you more than any calendar can
May 6: Maintain soil moisture with mulch for garden success
April 29: What's (already) wrong with my tomato plants?
April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)
April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers
April 8: When to plant summer vegetables
April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths
March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth
March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space
March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds
March 4: Potatoes from the garden
Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later
Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space
Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants
Feb. 4: Starting in seed starting
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Garden Checklist for week of May 18
Get outside early in the morning while temperatures are still cool – and get to work!
* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.
* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters. Transplant seedlings for many of the same flowers.
* Plant dahlia tubers.
* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.
* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.
* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.
* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.
* Are birds picking your fruit off trees before it’s ripe? Try hanging strips of aluminum foil on tree branches. The shiny, dangling strips help deter birds from making themselves at home.
* As spring-flowering shrubs finish blooming, give them a little pruning to shape them, removing old and dead wood. Lightly trim azaleas, fuchsias and marguerites for bushier plants.
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