Warning! Don't Prune Your Cherry Tomatoes! (NOT) Pruning Tomato Plants for Maximum Yield!

well good morning this is plant smart living with farmer Fred really glad you could join me today out here in the vegetable garden well the Lord has provided a beautiful day here in Pennsylvania zone six we're now the first week of July fact it's going to be in the 90s today we're going through a heatwave but my oh my the the plants are loving this heat you know the tomatoes the peppers the melons they love warm feet and so they're just really taking off today today out here in the garden and the weeks to come well anyhow today's title of my video is called warning do not prune your cherry tomatoes so thanks for joining me today out here in the vegetable garden [Music] [Music] so you may be wondering why am i giving a warning is it a life-and-death situation of course not I've learned from experience you know as I often share that gardening is a big learning curve full of trials and errors and sure that there are certain Tomatoes that I do prune you know like your supersonic Tomatoes your big-boy Tomatoes a lot of the ones that you can get up to 16 ounces or more they're really heavy Tomatoes so I basically do grow them up one central leader or stem but your cherry tomatoes I've learned over the years not to prune them now I may I have I have seven plants that I have growing out there seven sungold cherry tomato plants out in my garden and of course the cherry tomatoes I've grown your sweet million Tomatoes I also grow in the yellow pear tomatoes I've done taste test comparison videos on the sungold cherry tomato versus the sweet million or the yellow appear to mate I've done videos about that taste test comparison and to me the song gold cherry tomato knocks all the other ones out of the park when it comes to flavor but what I've learned over the years is to just want my trellises I have mine growing up a couple of my cattle panel trellises also on one of my wooden trellises I'll take you over there and show them to you but what I'll do is I maybe start with one or two leaders or stems and then to get up get them up off a couple feet off the ground and then after that I'll just start tying the stems and the leaders to my cattle panel trellises and just let them go wild let them do your your own thing and you'll be amazed at how much production you'll get out of your Tomatoes by just not pruning them now your Bush type Tomatoes or your determinate tomatoes I use my heavy duty metal is out there are those you don't throw the role you just let them do their own thing as well but I'm talking about your indeterminate cherry type tomatoes they're roughly around an inch or more in diameter but anyhow why don't we go over to my garden structure and I'll show you where I have one plant growing and then I'll take you over to my cattle panel trellis so follow me along I ended up buying my sungold cherry tomato plants from raised nursery over there in Telford PA they were like a dollar 25 apiece and so it's just amazing how much fruit or produce you can get from one plant in fact last year I froze 800 of my son gold cherry tomatoes I take a one gallon heavy-duty freezer bag and one bag holds around 200 of those yellow tomatoes and I froze four bags we use them in our recipes all winter long and I'm hoping that maybe freeze about a thousand this year because they ran a little short near the end and so so what I have here is I started out with one liter one stem and then at about three feet I have there's another branch that's developing and then up here around four feet I have two branches developing here one on the left and one on the right and so what I'm doing here on this particular situation is allowing the single stem or leader to grow up about 3 feet and then from there I'm going to let it branch off from here because this will grow up and over the top and even down the side of my my barber here and so it can get a good 12 feet warm and so what you want to do is I just use my two twine that to tie off all my branches if you can get them locally from a hardware store or something it's pretty cheap and you know it's just it's biodegradable and so I really like using that I also grow my tomatoes on all my plants in my composted leaf mulch that's amended with topsoil and I amended the top so opposite add additional minerals to the soil I ended up buying that locally from barn side compost I get five yards per year and so what I'm doing to support this is I call it the rope and twist method I ended up hanging the rope from the hook up top and then I tie it around the base of the plant and then I just simply twist it up around the plant as it grows and it's just a really easy way to help support these indeterminate tomato plants let's take a closer look and so why don't we take a walk over to one of my cattle panel trellises I had two cattle panel trellises here in the garden and like I said I'm growing a total of seven of my sungold cherry tomato plants so let's head over there you can also see that my beautiful canna lilies are starting to bloom here so let's go up to the second cattle panel thriller I just love having these cattle panel trellises in the garden they're beautiful to look at and they're the last a lifetime I did a video a couple years ago showing how you can install one of these a step-by-step video taking you through the whole process I it was like hey you could build one for under $45 I ended up buying these from tractor supply and they're just really great to grow a lot of your vegetables up but as you can see I have a lot of these stems or leaders starting to take off in different directions and so what I'm going to be doing is I'll tie these using my jute twine to the to the cattle panel trellis you got one hanging under here got another one over here and even on when I first grew these I have about two liters already about a foot high taken off from the main stem again in the and the suckers you don't obviously prune on these bazzill develop into a branch which will later produce more Tomatoes you also want to make sure you plant these where they'll have a good 6-8 hours of sunlight because that way they'll reach full production my wife and I have been able to come out and we've we're picking a few sungold cherry tomatoes off the lower branches but in another week or so these are gonna really ripen so we're looking forward to having these in my salad I have a big salad every night for dinner and like I put everything in it but the kitchen sink and the Sun Gold cherry tomatoes I'm really looking forward to having these in our salad well anyhow I hope this video is able to give you some ideas on why not to prune your sungold cherry tomatoes or your cherry tomatoes in general because again you'll the harvest will be 5 to 10 fold by just letting them go wild anyhow if you have any questions or comments about this video feel free to leave them in the comment section below and you can also visit us at plant smart living.com and there you can learn more about gardening and also how you can reclaim and restore your health by adopting a whole food plant-based vegan lifestyle Wendy how it's really heating up here out in the garden I'm starting to sweat already tomorrow's fourth of July so we're looking forward to spending time with some friends and family and loved ones Wendy how I hope you have a wonderful day and a bountiful garden season so until next time this is plant smart living with farmer Fred [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Plant-Smart Living w/ Farmer Fred Detwiler

Views: 436,306

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Id: 8PrjE9gOyTc

Length: 11min 41sec (701 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 03 2018