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Re: Tomato pruning

At 02:13 PM 6/5/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Still looking for SPECIFIC tips on tomato pruning.  NOT GENERAL tips, thanks.
> General tips have not proved useful.   
>
> How do I tell if I have bush tomatoes or vine tomatoes (all my tomatoes are
>bushy, including those I know to be Beefsteak).  Do I prune both vine and
>bush plants?  How *exactly*?
>
First of all, with either variety, pinch out the little shoots that come out
of the "crotch" of the plant between the major stem and the trunk so to
speak.  These are called suckers and will reduce yield if left on the plant.
You can root these if you want more tomato plants.  I do this because I just
can't bring myself to toss a perfectly good plant into the compost. ;)

Next, I top mine off (both varieties, but I let the vine types get a little
taller) because I'm short and really don't like taking a ladder into my
garden.  After the plants get about 5' tall, I pinch out any growth on top.
Of course this may not be necessary with some of the bush types that have
been bred to be short.

Another thing that I do is to not let more than three tomatoes on a cluster
mature.  Just pinch off anything over three blossoms.  This reduces the
number of fruits, but the ones that are left are *much* bigger because the
plant can focus its energy on maturing the remaining fruits.  Think of this
as a type of deadheading.  You can skip this at the first of the season if
you are preserving the tomatoes and want a lot of fruit, but at the end of
the season the fruits get progressively smaller so it would be desirable to
pinch extra blooms out at this point just to get a "normal" size fruit.

These tips are what have worked for me, but like all other gardening issues,
everyone has their own system.  My advice is to try the ones that make sense
to you and see what happens. 

Let me know how it goes.

Monica L. Tittle  hstrynut@sonet.net
Monica's Rules for Life
Rule #1  Never sleep with rock stars, professional athletes or politicians,
               you never know were they've been.
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