December 3, 2024

VIDEO: How to Prune Tomato Plants (and Other Tomato Tips) | Roots and Refuge Farm


Today I’m showing how to prune tomato plants to encourage health of the plant.

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24 thoughts on “VIDEO: How to Prune Tomato Plants (and Other Tomato Tips) | Roots and Refuge Farm

  1. Hi Jess, I've shared this video with several friends and my oldest daughter who is planting tomatoes for the first time. I always had a huge garden and can answer most of her questions, but seeing your very in-depth and informative video was very helpful to her. She was amazed at all the information you provided so I thank you Jess.

  2. Wonderful video, you did a great job of covering the basics! I did want to bring up a point about topping the tomato plants though. I've found that the same action of topping the tomato plant will have vastly different results depending on what stage in its lifecycle the plant is at. What you said about intentionally topping indeterminate tomato plants later on in the season so they can focus their energy on ripening fruit instead of new growth certainly rings true. But I haven't found that topping a young seedling or accidentally trimming the "wrong" sideshoot will have any negative effect on the plant's growth rate, maximum size or fruit set. At most it may set the plant's growth back by a few days, especially if you remove the main leader from a young plant with no developed side-shoots; but once growth starts emerging from the new top again, it should pick up growing the same way it did before the old top was removed. This makes sense from the standpoint of a seedling growing in the wild. Young, short, tender plants often fall victims to being grazed on, broken by wind or animals, or being otherwise damaged. At that point in its life the plant is focusing all its energy on growing large enough to support fruit, so if its nutrient requirements are met it should very quickly produce a new main leader. (consistent browsing may encourage the plant to set fruit at a shorter size, but I haven't found this to effect indeterminate tomatoes in a garden setting when topping the plant one time. It may encourage branching, but those can be easily pruned off.) Your method of occasionally allowing two leaders to develop on a young plant supports this theory. If trimming off the the original top of the plant really resulted in a stunted plant due to the new side-shoot developing differently than the original leader, then the secondary leader would never be able to grow as tall or set as much fruit as the original leader. I haven't found that to be the case at all when training multi-leader tomato plants: usually both stems grow to the same size, bare the same amount of fruit, then die back at the same time. The timing is very important though, but as long as you top the plants before the first flower set, I don't believe it has any negative effects at all. Please let me know if you've conducted more trials with this, or have had different experiences with topping young plants! I'll have to try your tip about using tomato tar in cooking, that sounds like a great way to make use of excess trimmings!

  3. Wow! I learned a couple of things today! I really appreciate that you are so willing to share your knowledge. Thank you!

  4. I'm literally outdoors, on a stool in front of the tomatoes!!! We are watching your video before I prune so I don't mess up! I'm in zone 7b and the humidity is no joke.

  5. Just discovered your channel yesterday June 12, 2021 and WOW what a wealth of information. Really one of the best instructional channels I have ever found. I will be sharing with all of my contacts.

  6. Wow! I have learned so much this year, my parents have been growing tomatoes in the Texas Hill country for years with little success..
    They are old-school lol so although they know about the Internet their WiFi is not the best & just don’t look at it very often in the sense of that matter… I have taken it to a whole new level since I have moved closer to them… I wish I would’ve documented the jungle I pruned Sunday on Father’s Day! But this is a very elaborate video that would help them very much and I thank you.

  7. Thank you for this excellent video! Question: Are heirlooms particularly vulnerable to faciated (effaciated?) blossoms/multiple fruits growing as one?

  8. I learn more in your videos than an entire gardening course would teach! I’m new to tomatoes and my first season was a disaster here in North Carolina. I blamed it all on the heirloom varieties I was growing when the real problem was my lack of know how. I battled everything from blight to tobacco horn worms, breakage, splitting, you name it. Not next season. One question I still have is do you feed your plants at all during the season?

  9. One thing that always fascinated me about western culture is growing tomatoes… I got my white vinyl fence now and now I'm looking up these videos life is crazy

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