Tip - How to Prune a Tomato

Here are six good reasons to prune tomatoes: To grow more flavorful tomatoes. To grow larger tomatoes. To grow more tomatoes over the length of a season. To keep plant leaves and fruits off the ground and away from pests, insect damage, and fungal disease. To keep plants smaller and more compact. To allow tomatoes on the plant at the end of the season to ripen before the first frost. Pruning a tomato means removing unneeded growth tips from the plant. These growing tips are sometimes called shoots or suckers. Growth tips are the new growth--the small leafy-bud growth--located in the "V" or crotch between two stems. Pruning or pinching away new growth allows a tomato plant to concentrate its energy on the development of fruit rather than new foliage. Plant sugars used to make new growth are instead used to concentrate flavor and grow larger, healthier tomatoes. Determinate and indeterminate tomatoes: Tomatoes can be divided into two growth habit categories: [...]