How to Prune Tomatoes for MAXIMUM yield (and Other Tomato Tips) | Roots and Refuge Farm

hey y'all it's Jess welcome back to roots and refuge farm today I am going to do a video you guys have been asking for today I'm going to talk to you about properly pruning your tomato plants now the first question you may have is why would you want to prune your Tomatoes I and the answer to that is it really just depends on where and how you're growing your garden now I prune my tomato plants pretty heavily and for two reasons one the main reason I live in Central Arkansas where it is hot and humid during the summer and Moisture is kind of like the arch-nemesis of healthy tomato plants if you've got a situation where your leaves and your foliage is staying wet where there's not enough airflow it's just the recipe for disease and fungus and then just kill your plants entirely pruning just makes for healthier plants and in that it makes for a greater harvest the other thing is is I do raise beds and so I like to plant things pretty close together I don't have the option of just putting three and four feet between my tomato plants which that's what a lot of people do whenever they're growing in the ground they just space them out a lot further but in raised beds obviously I'm having to fill these with soil and so I want to use this space as wisely as possible it never fails whenever I start talking about pruning somebody pipes up and says well I've never proved my tomato plants and I've always had a great harvest that may be the case you may have no issues with it whatsoever in that case more power to you keep on keeping on let your tomato plants Bush out like crazy that just doesn't work where I live so if you're here you've dealt with disease you've dealt with the frustration of losing your harvest early and you're like well how do I pretty much many plants this videos for you there are two types of tomato plants there are in determinants and determinants and you may have seen those words and not fully understood sometimes seed packages and plant starts are not clearly labeled and so this brings on some confusion most tomato that you're going to get to grow in your garden they're going to be indeterminate it's like most most of them are and if they're labeled dwarf or mini dwarf or bush those are going to be determinate varieties and basically the difference is is a determinate tomato it has a determined level of growth genetically in the plant it will have a determined amount of blossoms a determined height it doesn't just keep growing and growing it grows to a certain point it sets its certain amount of blossoms it grows its fruit and then it stops an indeterminate plant it keeps growing as long as you keep the plant healthy and you continue to offer the plant support it will continue to grow I mean they can get 15 feet tall whenever people grow them like in greenhouses with really really high supports you are not going to prune determinate tomato plants like I'm showing you today let them Bush let them have all their flowers that is how you want to grow those today I'm talking about pruning and this is always for indeterminate variety because essentially what we're going to be doing with these plants is cutting off some of the branches that would set fruit if they were allowed to continue to grow so if you have a determined amount of blossoms and a determined amount of fruit you don't want to lop off half of it because you're going to be seriously cutting into your harvest if you do that however with an indeterminate plant we go ahead and we sacrifice those branches to keep the plant healthier longer because in doing that you really do extend your harvest in order to prune your Tomatoes all you need is some like garden snips pruners scissors whatever doesn't have to be fancy it does need to be relatively sharp and clean whenever these little parts that I'm going to show you to break off are small you can pretty much pinch them off however when they start to get bigger that gets harder to do and just ripping at them with your hands is going to more likely damage your plants here we have a happy little tomato transplant as you can see here there is a main stalk that goes all the way up and these little branches that come off these are the leaf branches and if you'll see right here in the armpit of this tomato plant very technical term there this is this is called a sucker now if allowed to grow each of these suckers growing in the armpits of this plant here's a little bigger one down here these would grow into another stalk like this which would eventually set off flowers just like these and the flowers would eventually become fruit so if allowed to grow this plant would get really really bushy with lots of big strong stalks with lots of flowers and lots of fruit which you think well that's a great thing and the problem with that is is that that cuts off the airflow and harbors moisture and fungus and therefore it can make for sick plants now you can see here our plants are close together and as they grow up we attach them to these cattle panels so I want to make sure that there's air flow and the way we do that is that we're going to prune this plant down to this one main stem and we're not going to allow it to grow a bunch of side shoots the first thing that I'm going to do is anywhere where these leaves are touching the ground I'm going to come in and cut those leaves off so there's bottom a little bit I have that completely clear that way there's no splash back I'm not having any moisture back on these plants you can even see these leaves here because they were touching the ground they've got a little bit of insect damage bottom leaves get sick first on tomato friends as my plants grow and they reach the bottom of this trellis I will actually trim every single stem and leaf off of the bottom like 20 inches everything that's below this trellis will be completely clean now obviously I can't do that now because the entire plant is below the trellis but as it continues to grow up these bottom leaves they're going to get longer and that means they're going to touch the ground they're going to get that splash back they'll start to curl they might get brown so as this plant gets taller and taller I'll continue to cut off these bottom leaves until there's nothing underneath the bottom of this trellis but in the meantime the main thing that I want to deal with are these little suckers and when they're really small it's easy to come and just pinch them off okay and you just come through and take all of the suckers out of the armpit of this plant so now see nothing growing between here no leaves touching the ground so when I very quickly come through and prune my young plants it looks something like this cut off any of the lower branches that are touching the ground pinch off the little suckers and if you do this every few days the growth won't get away from you and you'll keep nicely pruned plants that are really manageable but let's be honest sometimes we don't get to the garden every few days sometimes it rains for a week or we have to go out of town and we come back to massive growth then what do we do I've actually led a couple of tomato plants down here go just to show you how to deal with it if you aren't pruning from the very beginning this plan is a little bit older than the rest of mine and I have purposely just completely not pruned it so you can see here there there are a lot of branches down here towards the ground and this bottom part has not been cleared off but if you look right here this is what happens to a sucker that is allowed to develop do you see how it's creating another stem that's almost as big as this one and if you'll see here here's another one where it has split off pruning more established plants is really more of an operation than working on plants that have just tiny little sprouts because when we cut off these branches we're creating more of a wound that this plant has to heal from and it's also creating a larger opening where infection could come in so it's really important if you're going to be pruning especially larger plants that you do it when it's dry outside and not in the middle of the day morning is best evening works - I would not want to do this right before it was about to rain a bunch working on more established plants like this sharp snips or scissors really do make a big difference because if I were just to take this branch and pull it there's a much more chance of me grabbing more of the skin creating a tear breaking a main branch so I definitely want to use my snips in this situation so the first thing I'm going to do is come in and cut off these lower branches I want to cut off everything that's touching the ground because as you can see here these are kind of already showing some holes in spots now that that's done I'm going to in and cut these suckers off the armpit interestingly enough I can actually take this and stick it in some water allowing it to root and I could have myself at this point what's called a clone this would produce another tomato plant that can be planted in the ground and that will bear fruit if you want to multiply the plants that you have save these suckers and put them in some water to root now here is a nice big sucker you can see that this is already starting to produce a second stem I'm going to go ahead and cut this one off however if you'll notice right here this sucker kind of grew sort of connected to this now I don't always do this but in this situation where this plant is developed enough that I think that I could be possibly risking infection on cutting this and the thing is I don't really know which one of these was the original main stalk I had to guess I would say this one but I don't want to risk cutting off the top of this plant because that'll keep it from growing taller I'm going to make a call in this situation where there is a split right here to leave both of these stalks that means that this particular plant will not be pruned to one main stalk it's going to have this split it'll be a little bit larger I don't want to do that on all of them but sometimes I'm willing to make an exception if I feel like that's what's best for the plant okay I'm gonna go ahead and look here and pull off the small suckers higher up on this plant and so that's it for pruning this one now before too long I'll come back and cut off these bottom leaves once the plants a little bit bigger you may have seen me just drop these branches down in the bed I usually come back through afterwards I grab all of these if they are healthy looking they go in the compost if they are not if they've started to spot or brown I go ahead and just throw them in the burn pile if you do decide to root your suckers to try to create clones to have extra plants make sure that you only use really healthy clippings you wouldn't want to cut down a bottom sucker that's already starting to show spot because that's not going to create a healthy plant so if you've got a really healthy clipping just like this one you can go ahead and route it and make a clone plant it as another plant again here's another really established plant if you want to see me go ahead and prune it from the beginning I'm going to cut off anything that slowed down to the bottom or that may be touching the ground these are our very established suckers here I'm gonna go ahead and cut those off same thing here on the other side again I'm not rooting these because I already have hundreds of tomato plants I don't need any more but you could now in the case of this tomato plant you can see that this sucker has got itself pretty established but I am gonna go ahead and cut that guy off and trim this plant down to this one main stalk now here are two suckers that I just pulled off of these plants this one is the one that was a lot larger and you might think that this would be a better option to use as a clone to go ahead and reroute for a second plant but actually it's better to use the smaller ones you can give it a try with the larger suckers however this this sucker already had started to set flowers and it's just more plant to support essentially it has no root system it's got a grow a root system and trying to grow a root system for a larger amount of plant is harder and then growing a root system for a smaller one so if you're trying to go ahead and make some clones off your suckers when you're pruning go ahead and use the smaller the smaller suckers they just they route easier they transplant easier it's it's really the better way to go you may have also heard a term at some point called topping like topping your tomato plants now remember I was talking about in determinants and how they just keep growing and growing and growing as long as you provide them support and keep them healthy that's true unless you cut the top off of them they grow from the top this is where they develop new leaves and basically if you were to top your tomato plant it's just coming and snipping that top part off limits this plant's ability to grow any taller now I'm telling you this to make sure when you are pruning your plants prune from the bottom up and leave the top alone you don't want to make any mistakes and accidentally lock the top off of your indeterminate tomatoes because then you're gonna be really sad whenever it stops growing and stops producing fruit the time that you want to top your Tomatoes is one when they get too tall for the supports that you're willing to get them I have my own determinate tomatoes growing on these cattle panels which are raised about 20 to 24 inches up above the ground which means I'm offering about 6 feet of support and they can grow about 2 feet higher than that before the wind begins to knock them around and branches are in risk of breaking and so when mine get that tall usually it's getting it's getting close to the end of us having plants at that point anyway it's really hot here so I don't get to grow them all the way through the summer at that point I can go and just snip the top off my plant and what it's going to do at that point it's going to cause that plant to focus on ripening the fruit that it's already set instead of growing more branches setting more flowers and attempting to produce more fruit another reason why you would want to go ahead and top your plants it other than running out of space is running out of time like if you live in a northern region and let's say it's three weeks four weeks to your last frost date you don't want that plant continuing to try to set new fruit that it won't have time before the frost comes to ripen so a lot of times what people will do in those regions is they'll go top off all their plants so the plants can then focus on ripening the fruit that's already been set instead of worrying about trying to set more one more thing to discuss in regards to pruning is blossoms now my plants have been in the ground for long enough that I feel comfortable with them setting blossoms even though some of them are kind of puny like this little guy when I first put them in the ground whenever they are in pot still or when they're very first transplanted within that first week or so a lot of times I will come pinch the first set of blossoms that the plant produces and pinching blossoms may seem counterintuitive to trying to grow free however we we get better harvests with overall healthier plants and healthier root systems so when you first put your plants in the ground if they're trying to set fruit at that point they're not going to be focusing on growing their root too deep so pinching off those first sets of blossoms a lot of times lends to a better harvest in the long run because it lends to a better root system now some of my plants are still on the smaller side but they're going to grow really fast especially with this proper pruning they have good root systems I planted them deep when I planted them so at this point I am NOT pinching any blossoms unless unless I see blossoms like this this is called a Phase II ated blossom or a fuse blossom and this one's actually not awful but you can see here that this is a like a massive blossom that has multiple flowers that are fused together it's really big and I pull these off have you ever seen those big funky deformed looking heirloom tomatoes that have all of these crevices and cracks and chunks where it looks like kind of conjoined twins or triplets this is that in its infancy fused blossoms or face eiated blossoms is where multiple blossoms essentially are growing together in one and what this is going to produce is really deformed fruit that's not always a bad thing honestly I think it's pretty cool sometimes you get these massive funky heirloom tomatoes and it is kind of cool but unfortunately sometimes whenever they're really cat-faced like that that's what that's called this cat facing there are big parts that don't form right they end up rotten so really if you want more uniform fruit that's maybe more usable you can just pinch off the big face eiated blossoms when you come across it if you're not sure if you think maybe that's just a big blossom just to leave it it's not that big a deal if you get a little bit of a deform tomato it's kind of the fun of heirlooms but sometimes you'll see these massive flowers that are that are clusters of like six or seven blossoms just all fused together and chances are really really good that what that's going to do is just really draw on that play to ripen and produce that massive fruit and chances are good is not even going to be that usable for you so I always keep an eye out for big face eiated blossoms and go ahead and prune those off here's another example of a face eiated blossom that's kind of coming in you can really see clearly that this is two flowers that's fused together and so if this produced a tomato it would it would look like two Tomatoes fused together so I'm going to take that guy off one more thing to keep in mind if you have a day of tomato pruning and ahead of you is that tomato plants have a substance on their branches called tomato tar and if you spend an extended period of time handling a lot of plants if you're pruning and you're touching the plants a good deal okay you'll end up with this black substance on your fingers that is really tacky it's kind of greenish black and it's a really really difficult to wash off and in and of itself it's harmless except for it's just gonna make you look dirty whenever you get out to the grocery store so if you want to get that off your fingers some acid works well just some sort of acid like vinegar washing your hands with a little bit of white vinegar and rubbing it it will stain your kitchen towels so just be aware of that what you wipe it off on however that substance does have a benefit of having really intense tomato flavor so actually when you're pruning if you want to save a few of your little discarded tomato branches and leaves you can throw these in your soup pot or in your sauce and they will lend a really great tomato a flavor to whatever dish that you're cooking just make sure you strain them out because I don't know that the leaves themselves are gonna have the taste and texture that you're looking for thank you guys so much I do have a couple more videos out about growing tomatoes about how to plant them and some tips and growing them I will link both of those videos below thank you so much for watching I bless you until next time you

Channel: Roots and Refuge Farm

Views: 799,346

Keywords: homesteading vlog, roots and refuge, growing food, tomato growing, how to grow tomatoes, how to prune tomatoes, how to prune tomato plants, growing tomatoes, how to garden, gardening advice, gardening tips, beginning gardening, vegetable gardening, roots and refuge garden, roots and refuge tomatoes, gardening vlog, gardening channel

Id: RmKK136KH7Y

Length: 19min 52sec (1192 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2019