#1 Reason Your Tomatoes Are Not Ripening - How to Speed It Up

[Music] [Laughter] what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the mi Gardner Channel today we're gonna talk about pruning as it pertains to D foliated our tomato plants so that our tomatoes can ripen faster this is something I don't see a lot of people doing and a lot people are afraid to do because they're worried that either they're going to kill their plant or it's going to stunt the growth I'm not exactly sure why there's so much fear around it but I can start off by saying that we do it every single year there's nothing wrong with it and in fact there are some benefits to doing so let's get into it so one of the most common things I hear people say is that they don't think their tomatoes are ripening fast enough or they've had green tomatoes on all season long but they just won't ripen the first reason why your Tomatoes probably aren't ripening is because they're in the shade Tomatoes will actually ripen when exposed to sunlight or they'll ripen faster so one of the things I was encouraged people to do is to D foliate this can help to to hasten the ripening process it can also help to get more airflow near the fruit which can help the the fruit ripen there's nothing wrong with taking these leaves totally off because the plant has already focused its its energy on producing this fruit meaning the leaves that are up higher they'll serve a purpose to continue the plant growth continue more fruit growth and these leaves down here are really um almost past their prime you'll notice they do get a little more weathered some might even start forming a little spots that's late blight and late blight well obviously in the season it's late but if it's early in the season its early blight but either way usually this time of year when you have tomatoes on its late blight and late blight can actually end up killing your plant so the best way to encourage a disease-free plant also is to continue pruning it up and there's nothing wrong with pruning it up as far up as you would like to go I've seen some people leave especially near the end of this season they'll leave just a couple sets of leaves up top and everything else will be defoliated meaning it'll be just a totally bare stem all the way up and that's um you know that's an aggressive approach but it's one that you might find works for you I personally don't take off any more foliage I think is really necessary I like to let cut that cut that support tear but I'll go back and tie that a second but you know when I when I prune off my leaves and I start defoliating I really don't like to fully eating any more than about 30% of the plant at most that's my most extreme so you can see here there's this top portion of foliage up here and all this beautiful all this beautiful can't under understory or canopy area is all left for the fruit to be exposed to more sunlight and ripen up here's another plant that I'll probably end up pruning up any old fruit trusses I just like to clean up the stems because like I said anything that's going to cluster things up reduce airflow the things that I don't want especially this time of year in Michigan we're real hot humid summers like today you know they're just 80 90 percent humidity and the more airflow around the plant the better see it here and all this all this can actually go and so now I've got anything higher than that about two and a half feet off the ground all pruned up it means all these tomatoes are gonna be exposed to beautiful sunlight where they're going to ripen and the rest of the plant which is about eight feet tall can all ripen so you're talking like two to three feet total total plant height is around eight feet I generally say you know no more than about thirty percent that's where I feel pretty comfortable defoliating but you can see how much of a difference that makes it just cleaning the whole stem up and you know it just really makes sure there's lots of great airflow because your your newer leaves are going to be the last disease disease prone your newer leaves are gonna be up top meaning they're not going to be shading down the fruit and all so your old leaves like I said all they're doing is really just serving as a placeholder for where the plant used to be the the tomato is a vine meaning that it's actually always growing in an upward mode and upward pattern as long as it's an indeterminate if it's a determinate obviously that's a completely different story but still defoliating a determinate there's nothing wrong with that you just have to be careful not to defoliate so much because it also has a determined height so I hope you all enjoyed this episode I hope you learned something new it's also something that I recommend you go out and try right now don't wait the benefits can only be seen once you do it and you really will love it once you clean up that bottom of the tomato plant and and get it up off the ground it'll just be so much more disease-resistant it'll be so much healthier and the fruit will ripen so much quicker so you can start enjoying the fruits of your labor so as always I hope you all enjoyed I hope you learned somebody new if you did make sure to hit that like button it really helps spread this video around to more people that I I really wish could see this type of thing and utilize this type of information so make sure to do that for me that's the least you could do and if you really did enjoy make sure to subscribe share this video with a friend because I think they'd enjoy it as well especially if you did and as always this is Luke from the mi Gardner channel reminding you to grow big or go home it's hot out here I'm gonna get inside get some water but I'll catch y'all next time bye

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Views: 327,843

Rating: 4.9493337 out of 5

Keywords: pruning tomatoes, trick, tomato, ripe tomatoes, defoliate, migardener, how to grow tomatoes, information, pruning, tip, tomatoes not ripening, tutorial, helpful, leaves, Premiere_Elements_15

Id: b1UOJzCCIE8

Length: 6min 10sec (370 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 13 2018