How We Prune and Stake Our Tomatoes For Maximum Production and Health

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the in my Gardener Channel we're back out in the garden today and we got some rain so make sure you give a huge thumbs up for some rain thank you thank you the garden desperately needed it but we got some rain we're back out in the garden and I'm loving it because today we're going to be playing with our tomatoes so we got a lot of tomatoes that are looking great they're growing huge we definitely need to start pruning them and staking them up and so I thought I'd bring you guys along for a very comprehensive video on how we prune as well as steak our Tomatoes now as you guys know on this channel I've always said this what works for me might not work for you but I want to show you what we do because we've had a lot of success in the past with this method specifically and there's some things that you kind of need to know going into this before you just go out and do it in your garden and so with that being said let's get started because I think pruning your tomato plants and keeping them healthy is one of the biggest reasons that you're either going to succeed with growing tomatoes or just have moderate success tomatoes are pretty simple to grow but it's the things that you do to your tomato plants when when it comes to staking and pruning that takes them to the next level allows them to stay that much more healthy and yield that much more fruit so let's go all right so before we get started pruning and staking up our tomato plants we first have to look at the three different types of tomatoes now a lot of you have probably heard of the main two which are a determinate and indeterminate but there's actually a third and that's a semi-determinant now how we treat our Tomatoes is really going to dictate the type of tomato that we are growing because the thing is is that if you if you prune a determinant you're going to be decreasing your yields if you fail to prune an indeterminate you're going to be ending up with a huge tangled up mess so it's really important to know the distinctions between the three different varieties and so I want to talk about those right now all right so the first type of tomato is a determinate tomato now a determinate tomato as the name implies is very determined the the height of the tomato is determined typically they're going to be about four to five feet tall at Max height but obviously that does vary typically that's right around the average though and then they're going to have a determined fruit yield they're going to form a lot of suckers those suckers are typically seen as bad things but on determinate Tomatoes it's a very good thing because what we want to do is have a lot of bushy growth that's then going to form a lot of fruit and flowers and then all of that fruit is going to ripen at the same time so the maturity the maturity date is very determined as well and so you're essentially growing a tomato that is very calculated it's very predictable and it's very safe especially if you're someone that's growing tomatoes for for canning and production you want to know all right I'm planting this plant and in 75 days I'm gonna get a harvest it's gonna be everything all at once and so it's very predictable now there's the second type of tomato which is an indeterminate now that is as the name implies it's it's it's not determined right it's indeterminate and it basically will keep growing as long as the season will allow this is a tomato that gets much taller than it does get wide it'll it'll form a lot of suckers on the on the branches as it starts to grow but not all of those suckers will have enough time to produce fruit and flowers because of the fact it'll continue to grow all season long so the tomato plant will still produce suckers and flowers even into October if we still had weather for it but there's no chance of the flowers actually forming fruit and the fruit ripening if it forms in October and so it's a very long long growing season tomato it's very uh you know it's reliant on you staking doing a lot of kind of manicuring to it and it also is typically going to be a lot of your heirlooms a lot of your heirloom tomatoes probably say probably 98 of them are an indeterminate and that means they're just going to continue to grow as long as the season allows and the fruit will ripen at different stages because they flower at different stages and then the third type is a combination of the two the semi-determinate this is a tomato that will continue to grow up until a kind of a determined height it will stop much like a determinate tomato does but the fruit won't ripen all at the same time and so it'll fruit and flower at varying times so you get a little bit of the indeterminate traits with some of the determined height and so those are the three different types of tomatoes and so now that you know that the really important thing is knowing how to treat them all right so now it's come time to pruning and staking now this goes back to what I said in the beginning which is that you need to know what you planted in your garden because depending on what you planted will depend on the method of pruning and staking that you choose so we're going to talk about the first two which are are really simple which are the determinate and semi-determinate tomatoes if you've planted a determinant or semi-determinate tomatoes these steaks mean nothing to you you do not want to use a steak like this because you're growing a bushy tomato you're growing a shorter stumpier tomato at four to five feet tall there's really no point in staking them up a 7 8 foot tall stake because they're not going to get that tall anyways and we're not going to prune them to a single main growth stem like we'll talk about in a second we're going to Simply plant them and forget them we're going to put them into a cage that's going to allow the branches to continue to form and form a really bushy plant that bushy plant like I said is what's going to give you more flowers and more fruit later on so a determinant and a semi-determinate tomato can be treated exactly the same that's you plant it in the ground and you simply forget it you put a cage around it and you come back when those tomatoes are ripe maybe a couple waterings maybe a couple fertilizings but you do not do any pruning at all and I repeat anything turning you don't do any pruning because the more pruning you do the more suckers you take off that's going to decrease the branches that's going to decrease future fruit yields and obviously what we're trying to do is trying to increase fruit yields so you don't do any pruning at all now the only type of Maintenance you can do to a determinant and a semi-determinant are taking off the lower leaves that might be touching the soil that's something that I always recommend doing because that's where blight actually forms blight is a soil-borne fungus and so when it's found on the ground usually it'll Splash up on your leaves and you end up getting something like like early blight or late blight so you can come in here and you can remove these lower leaves that's totally fine because these are not going to flower or fruit for you that's just going to equal a healthier plant once you've pruned the plant up though set it and forget it so now we're going to talk about the third and the type of tomato that we're growing here which is the indeterminate these are the tomatoes that continue to grow all season long they get nice and tall so we want to give them a nice tall steak for them to climb up now we have only indeterminates in our garden here and so uh we have our steaks these are uh these are t-posts they're eight foot tall t-posts and I guess they're probably about six and a half feet tall now because we pounded them in the ground but we've given them a nice tall steak to climb up now the next thing we're going to do is we're going to come in here and we're going to remove the suckers I'm going to show you what those look like we're also going to come in here and remove the lower leaves that are touching the ground so let's get that done first and then we can actually once we get everything removed and cleaned up then we can start staking all right so we're going to start pruning up and staking this uh this giant crimson tomato here so the first thing we always do is we start at soil level you cannot possibly prune the tomato plant top down it doesn't work that way you always have to work bottom up and so what we're going to do is we're going to start at the soil and you're gonna notice any type of growth down here that's starting to form we pull that away then we look for anything that looks like a new tomato plant those usually form at the base a lot of times the tomato plant will try to form like a fork and so we want to we want to remove that as well so we're going to take that and a lot of times if they're young and you catch them early you can just pull them off then we're going to form then we're going to keep following that stem up that's the main growth stem we're going to find some branches we're going to remove those get those off the soil again those are that's the highway for things like blight to climb I've taken off one layer I'll take off a second layer I might take off more later but I'm going to take off at least two layers of branches that means the plant is up probably at least I'd say about five six inches off the ground now you can take more off if you want I find that right now this is probably fine I might end up taking more off in a couple weeks but for now we're good I'm going to keep going up though I'm not going to remove any more stems but I am going to look in between the stems to find the suckers those are the little plants that look like little itty bitty tomato plants you can throw these as a little tip you can throw these in water and they will root and you can actually form a lot more tomato plants to give away or sell or plant but we have a lot of tomato plants already in our garden so we're simply going to remove them we're going to keep going up the plant we're systematic about this again we work from the bottom up and we don't get distracted now we've come here to where there's a y and this is where you're given the choice you can either you can either choose one or the other there's really no wrong way to do this it formed a fork and that fork has some flowers and this Fork here has slightly less flowers what I will do typically is I will always prioritize the fork that has the flowers because the fork that has the flowers is typically going to be your dominant your dominant growth point A lot of times the Tomato will kind of get confused if it's very healthy it'll form a like a y and both will look like a main growth point it's totally okay to say eeny meeny miny mo because you really can't go wrong but because this is already forming flowers it tells me it's a little bit stronger a little bit healthier a little more vigorous and this probably has a better chance of being the the main growth stem and so we're going to come in here and we're going to prune this out as well it's not really quite the same as a sucker because this actually was growing just as a main growth stem would and so it's important to cut that out and not break it so now we have a single main growth stem all the way up a nice set of flowers here it's been pruned off the ground so it's nice and healthy there's gonna be a lot of airflow to help dry out those leaves reduce splashing reduce the soil from splashing on the leaves and transmitting things like early blight as well as late blight later on it's also going to open up the flowers to things like pollinators much more airflow much more visibility to not only pollinators but also the fruits going to ripen better and faster as well and now we have a single main growth stem that we can tie up this steak here all right so now it is time to stake once we've pruned them up we've gotten them to the point where their icing cleaned up it's time that we stake them so what we've done here like I said we've taken some t-posts and pounded those into the ground you can also use furring strips they make eight to eight foot tall furring strips we cut the end on a 45 degree angle we've used those for years and they're totally fine they work great it's just they start to rot over time and these these cheap posts here they're going to be here for a long long time and they've been powder coated so they're not going to rust so we really like to use these but for an inexpensive option for a couple bucks you can use some t-posts as well but basically you want something to be nice and Tall that you can tie to what we're going to use to tie is this right here this is elastic string but we call it fantastic elastic we actually sell it over at migartner.com but it is currently sold out so I will post to the next best option in the comments box or the description box down below to where you can get it it's fantastic and we've been using it for years the reason why we want to use elastic string is because of the fact it has give using something with give is really important because when you tie up your tomato plants you want to make sure that you don't tie them with something that doesn't have any give a tight string will essentially girdle or choke the stem and on a windy day it doesn't give the Tomato the ability to sway and so what will happen is it will over time kind of cut into this stem of the tomato plant and so we're going to tie them up with is something that is stretchy that has give and something that is nice and soft but also something that won't get brittle in the sun fantastic elastic or elastic string doesn't get brittle in the sun it stays elastic the whole season which is great now you can also use something like like pantyhose you can slice pantyhose into strips and use those as well a lot of people have used those for years but again that can be a little bit expensive if you don't just have pantyhose laying around but any type of material can be used as long as it's got give and it's nice and stretchy so the plant can you know grow expand and sway in the Wind so we're going to take a portion here of this fantastic elastic and we're going to get about I want to say usually I like to I like to go pretty big here because you can always have some some slack you can always have extra but if you cut it too short sometimes it's difficult to tie I'm going to take my string I'm going to come around the post and I will always go underneath this is really important I will always go underneath a branch and the reason why is because that branch is going to hold the weight of the Tomato as it starts to grow I also when I staked my my plants I put my steak in this is also really important I put my steaks in a ways away from the plant a lot of people like to put their steaks right next to the tomato plants and the problem is is that once the plants are growing assuming nothing got damaged it's fine but when you put that steak in you really don't know where those roots are and in a lot of cases you can actually damage the plant if not completely killed it I'm speaking from experience so I like to put my steaks about five to six inches away from the plant and when the plants get tall enough I'll lean them into the steak and then once they're growing up the steak it's only you know as they say it's only up from there so so I go underneath a leaf node that's going to support the weight much much better than if you put it just anywhere on the stem and then I'm simply going to do an over under knot I just do two of them and you're good to go and so now this plant is staked it is on a 45 degree angle but as the plant starts to grow we're going to be staking it and tying it up the stem here and it's going to grow nice and straight so now this plant has been pruned and it's been properly maintained and it's been properly staked and it's that simple a lot of people tend to over complicate this process and they buy all this fancy equipment but really anybody can do this for even a couple bucks and doing this is going to guarantee a much healthier plant it's going to allow like I said the leaves to dry out it's going to allow for better pollination it's going to allow for more fruit to be set and on top of that it's going to hold a lot more fruit because we don't have all this fruit growing out in different parts of the plant all the weight is on this single point here so the the weight is a lot more balanced it's a lot more centered and the center of gravity since on a single post here the weight is going to be pulling down on the post rather than in one or two directions and that's going to help the plant to just fruit more in the long run as well so I hope you guys enjoyed I hope you learned something new if you did make sure to throw a like up there subscribe if you haven't already and I know that there's a lot of just kind of we've talked a lot about this before in other videos but I know a lot of you are new and so if you're new to this channel let me know in the comments box down below if you're new we've had so many new people join this Channel and join the community and I thank you so much for that because without you guys we wouldn't have you know a growing community and so uh so sometimes nice to kind of revisit some of these older videos that are still super important really applicable to your garden and sometimes can give you some reinforced information in case you forgot so as always this is Luke from the on my Gardener Channel reminding you to grow bigger take care everyone bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 72,425

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: WQ8oyjlmIzI

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023