How to prune your indeterminate cherry tomatoes

hi farmer Carrie I was wondering after we plant our tomato plants is there anything special we need to do with them Oh miss Levasseur thank you for asking because we do need to keep pruning our Tomatoes Tomatoes grow like crazy and you have gotten from us a cherry tomato that is indeterminate that means it's just going to keep growing and unless you want to have a jungle with a lot of a lot of leaves and not a lot of fruit you need to prune your indeterminate tomato like this find the stem ok the tomato will have a stem here I'll show you on this big guy remember when we planted these look how wonderful they're doing there's little flowers and a tomato growing now let's go to the big guy can you see that big stem see it kind of curves but it can trick you because right where this leaf comes out of the stem you see another chute coming do you see that I do what you want to do when the tomato is young don't be shocked watch me I'm gonna snap that off see it seems like a big chunk this is a sucker when you're not looking and your plants are young you're going to get big suckers and then you're going to have a lot of stems coming off at a very low level on your tomato they do that and then you're like oh no what do I do now so when they're young like right now you want to cut those suckers off or snap them off now see if we can find the other sucker see right here we planted this deep see the leaf there what's that see that right there that's a sucker pop there it goes now let's look for the other suckers ok see the stem goes up and then do you see any other suckers there's another sucker snap that off ok see that you are doing your tomato plant a favor now at some point see right here there's another sucker there's another sucker at some point you may say we're gonna let this grow so we have what's called two leads we have two stems and we can stake up our two stems we're gonna stake them with this string will show you that later so you could have two leaders but you don't want to have 20 leaders are you gonna have a big mess so get to know your tomato plant you don't want to snap the stem off you want to get the little suckers now we have to stake that pretty soon over here on our little tomato plant we have little baby suckers we can see right here the sucker okay now this guy is getting big already but we don't want to have a second leader that early in the plant so this one is big enough that I'm going to take my little Clippers off out by okay now you should catch them when they're this big see how little that guy is pop pop pop now the plant could put energy into growth and energy into fruit and you only have a couple leads in the beginning later you can let it go crazy now do you see any other suckers on this mister Levasseur there's one more right here see the stem come up there as the leaf goes out and look at that guy he wants to grow now there you go now we have pruned our tomato plant we're also by the way going to take these leaves off that are touching the ground you don't want to have any leaves touching the ground there you go we planted them deep so there was gonna be some leaves touching the ground okay there you go now our little tomato plant has been pruned and it's ready to keep growing and we're gonna keep an eye on our up here's another one look at that see that little guy there's another sucker pop there you go and we'll decide when we let this one branch out but that's what you do with your tomato plant but really get to know so the stem the leaf and the sucker you don't want to pull the wrong thing off right study at first before you pop it now these are indeterminate cherry tomatoes if you have gone to the nursery and bought a determinate tomato different kind of pruning don't take the suckers off okay you have to know whether you have an indeterminate or a determinant because the determinants they put out a fixed number of fruits a determinant amount and if you pull off all their little suckers that you're reducing the amount of tomatoes you're going to have but in determinants like the cherry tomatoes we gave you have an indeterminate amount of fruit they just keep growing and growing and growing so this is how you prune your cherry tomatoes that are indeterminate the die Nance your question micellar Vassar I did thank you very much farmer Kerry you're very welcome so everybody start observing their Tomatoes very well and if you have any questions send me a photo and I'll tell you whether you've got the right part okay thank you very much bye farm Kerry bye-bye

Channel: South Whidbey School Farms

Views: 163,461

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Id: xfPbziv_DuI

Length: 5min 45sec (345 seconds)

Published: Sun May 17 2020