To Prune or NOT to Prune Tomato Plants?

to prune or not to prune tomato plants that is the question g'day i'm mark from self-sufficient me and in this video i'm going to explain to you guys why i prune my tomato plants and why i don't prune my tomato plants let's get into it [Music] there are several things markers timings instances that i look for whenever i'm thinking of pruning or not to prune my tomato plants and the first one is the type of tomato plant basically there are two types of tomato plants an indeterminate tomato which grows up and keeps growing like a vine and you can see how this one is about a meter long now and it's starting to be trained along the top of this trellis for the fruit to grow and hang down and this will keep producing leaders that will lead out from the middle of the branches and just keep going and growing and keep expanding if you let it and then there's the other type of tomato plant and that's the determinant type which is this type and they grow like a bush bushy maybe no more than perhaps a meter tall let's start with the indeterminate type of plant these are mostly indeterminates that are growing on this side of our trellis and you can see that i've really stripped the bottom two feet on most of these plants completely away there's hardly any foliage at all and you can just see trusses of tomatoes sticking out here like you know shags on a rock basically because there is nothing there to hide them and in general i will prune indeterminate type plants as a rule because they do tend to get out of control if you don't control the growth of the plant on this side these are all determinant type tomato plants and as a general rule i don't prune these much at all because if you think about it they have a limited height anyway and the more you prune off them the more you're going to just the growth and if they're only going to get to about a meter high you don't want to take off more limbs because that means you'll be producing less fruit and that's not the purpose of growing a tomato plant is it it's to get as much fruit as possible on that plant so these yes they usually do need staking and support especially when they start getting laden with fruit but generally you don't prune them back the second thing that influences me about when i prune and when i don't is are we growing anything underneath the tomato crop such as these beetroot here or salads or herbs because if you are well then you want to shed light on those plants as much as possible and if you don't well then they're not going to grow too well but to maximize space i like to grow some smaller plants like salad crops or even beetroot because they do okay in the shade underneath tomatoes sometimes even peas or beans because they can complement tomatoes and even fix or add nitrogen to the soil and help the tomato plants grow as well the third thing i think about when considering to prune or not is diseased leaves or branches or even just lower branches because lower branches inevitably do become diseased first because they have the most exposure to the soil where the fungus hides as a general rule determinate or indeterminate all tomato plants i will trim them at least several inches up from the base so that these lower branches don't touch the ground and you can see here a great example of these lower branches starting to become diseased and these leaves and the other leaves up the top here disease free so what i'll do now is i'll give you a quick example of how i do just simply trim the base around these plants to limit that disease spreading [Music] yeah i just noticed a tomato so this is a pest that's got into here a grub and so i've pruned those tomatoes off that grub is probably inside and there's one on the outside here that would grow into another one and that'll just eat more ruin more tomatoes one by one so even pruning the odd tomato that doesn't look right or got a hole in it will help as well that'll get eaten by ants or birds now there we go that's much better all cleaned up aerated in the middle here leaves branches off the ground and i got rid of any leaves or branches that i saw with even a slightest sign of leaf disease and that should stay that disease for longer it won't stop tomatoes getting overpowered eventually by disease but it will slow it down considerably and this is a good example to lead me on to the next point of pruning or not pruning you can see this is an indeterminate variety it's growing large and it's creeping out and i'm holding it up with twine here and there and tying it to this structure but i'm not training it to just one stem i've let it grow wild and the reason for that is that's the only tomato there i'm letting it branch out a bit more to get some more fruit and let it have a bit of free rain why not tomato plants are designed to do that and to sprawl out i'll just show you the contrast back over at the trellis there you can see that i'm pruning them quite savagely at the base and also chopping the branches off them to stop them sprawling out over each other check out these two growing side by side these are both indeterminate they're money makers so they'll grow to a medium large size tomato and you can see they're quite close they're within around about eight inches apart normally you plant tomatoes maybe 40 centimeters apart that's the standard grain but you know i never hardly ever go standard i like to squish in my plants but there is a compromise i make and that is i don't want these bushing together otherwise too much humidity too much moisture not enough aeration if it was a one plant here like over there i would just let it branch out more perhaps have four or five branches but because they're growing so close together i've trimmed them back and you might say well why don't you just put one plant there then well that's a good question for the larger varieties in particular when you grow them off one main stem that might branch out to two liters or three max you get the best results out of tomatoes and strength of the plant rather than trying to grow one tomato plant and spreading that over a larger area with several different leaders coming off it this works okay for small tomato varieties and i'll show you that in a minute but it doesn't work too good for the larger varieties another theory behind it is that when you do that the tomatoes if they're the larger varieties will grow a bit bigger rather than having a big bushy plant with lots of trusses and smaller tomatoes and the last thing i'll talk about pruning or not to prune are the exceptions check out this magnificent specimen here this is a rootstock tomato the tomatoes are very small cherry-like tomatoes they are part of the very first original tomato plants that ruled the world probably way before humans and what a lot of modern day tomatoes are derived from this will grow vigorous and in situations and soils that other tomato plants or tomato varieties like the larger ones can't sustain or won't grow as well in i just like to grow them as a tough tomato plant that is an insurance against crop failure or just to have some beautiful cherry tomatoes to eat if you look through here you'll see where the tomatoes are ripening on the inside just beautiful see a tomato plant like this doesn't like getting pruned too much and if you do prune it too much you're not going to get much growth out of it this type of tomato plant loves growing bushy and i would leave it even if you do see some disease at the base start oh you can cut that off i suppose but at the end of the day i wouldn't be trying to train it into one or two liters because you're going to be limiting the fruit and with this type of berry tomato it really does like to set the fruit in the inner foliage and protect it because they're only a small tomato it gets too much sun on them they can burn and the fruit shrivels quite quickly so that's why i like to leave quite a bit of foliage on these types of tomatoes regardless and just let them bush out and take over areas because you're going to get the best results out of it so that's the exception so i hope that answered any questions on when to prune or when not to prune tomato plants if it didn't whack a question down in the comments section and i'll hopefully be able to get to it and answer it for you other people might as well if you're a beginner gardener a lot of advanced gardeners do watch my videos and they are a wealth of knowledge also down in the comments section so even those guys might be able to answer the question for you i hope you enjoyed this video if you did make sure you give it a big thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already go on hit that subscribe button thanks a lot for watching bye for now no [Music] i recommend you grow these fellas tell you what they are beautiful and they do make a good tomato sauce too yes you need a whole lot

Channel: Self Sufficient Me

Views: 579,303

Keywords: how to prune tomatoes, should you prune tomatoes plants, should you prune tomatoes, pruning tomatoes, tomato pruning, tomato pruning techniques, pruning, prune, tomato, tomato plant, garden, growing tomatoes, how to prune tomato plants, tomato pruning tips, tips for pruning tomato plants

Id: Vi_XTqgFk-E

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2019