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How to Prune a Tomato Plant
Summary: Learn how to prune tomato plants in your garden in this free video on low maintenance gardening.
Doug Smiddy has had an active interest in gardening as long has he can remember. "When people ask me haw long I've been gardening, I like to tell them that I've had the dirt under my...read more
"I'm Doug Smiddy of Smiddy's Gardening Services here on behalf of expertvillage.com and welcome to my garden. Today we're here to talk about pruning your tomato plant. Now why do we prune a tomato plant? Because now we're at the stage where you could see all the fruit is set, all the leaves are out. We don't really need to waste the plants energy on producing more leaves, we want the plants energy to go to producing in growing these tomatoes and ripen. So what you want to do is look around your plant and you can see some little yellow flowers and that eventually is going to form a tomato. The idea is to prune away all the non flowering branches like this. See this little one here cut him away. Don't be afraid to over do it just be careful before you cut it that there's no flower or fruit on it. Like over here we can cut that and again it really don't make much sense to waste that plants energy on a non flowering branch. I tell you what when it's done it's not going to look pretty but that doesn't matter, your tomatoes are going to be riped and red and absolutely beautiful. As you can see I have left anything on the plant that has already or will be producing a tomato. Even a small little tomato will eventually grow into a little tomato like that, which will grow into a bigger tomato and start to ripen like that and eventually with the tomatoes like these which are ready for picking. I cut off all the non flowering branches, as a matter of fact I just missed one, cut that off too. The leaves have done their jobs already, they've preformed their photosynthesis duties. Again, you want the plants energy to focus on ripening these tomatoes so the sunlight can hit them and again it doesn't look pretty, but oh boy you're going to love the results."
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Comments
cafeguitarist said
on 8/13/2009 i agree with tomatolover! this information was incomplete and flawed!! i called my local nursery and got the opposite information. Ugly is an understatement! if my tomato plants were people they would be arrested for indecent exposure! but hey, that's the internet. the information you get here is worth what you pay for it... that is: NOTHING!!
empresdeb said
on 8/2/2008 I have wondered for 10 years how to do this, now I know. Good video
mrnotducks said
on 6/1/2009 Thanks for the advice on the leaves......question...When do I prune the leaves without the buds...Also what do I do with the suckers.....Thanks please email me.....joeyeblin@yahoo.com...thanks
tomatolover said
on 3/22/2009 I have read conflicting info on other sites about pruning tomatoes.
First the video instructs you to remove ALOT of the foliage - the plant was left with hardly any foliage. Other expert gardening sites state that some foliage is needed to protect tomatoes from sun burn. Also, the topic of "suckers" was not addressed. Where are they? When & how often do they need to be pruned? I do not feel that this instruction was 100% correct and not comprehensive. I would like to know more about this because it certainly seems to be an important part of growing healthy tomatoes. I would also like to know what varities grow best in drought conditions and in Sonoma County California and have found little information about this in my web searches. Any tips from successful tomato gardeners? Email me at serenityadara@yahoo.com. Thanks!!
stevenshane said
on 8/2/2008 Thanks so much for the great video... My tomato plants are like forests right now, and I am new to gardening. Thanks for the tip. I wonder if the same holds true for my jalapeno pepper plants and bell peppers? Anyway, all best.