Pruning Tomatoes

 

Tomato plants require significant amount of pruning during its growth, because by pruning tomatoes, all the excess leaves are removed from the plant which helps in controlling the dampness and allows for the sufficient amount of air to come in and keep them dry. As tomato plants are susceptible to various types of diseases and fungi, by pruning tomatoes it becomes easy to fight and control them to a great extent.

Pruning Tomatoes

Pruning of tomatoes on the regular basis also helps them in attaining excellent growth and results in a much bigger and juicy tomato fruits. If the tomato plants are not pruned in a proper way, there is a risk of smaller crop as most of the energy of the tomato plant goes into the useless branches and leaves instead of fruits.

Here we are listing few tips that you should remember while pruning tomatoes in your garden:

1. Prune maximum amount of leaves- Tomato plants don’t need too many leaves for producing good crop of tomatoes. Only the leaves at the top of the plant are necessary for collecting the sunlight and absorbing the carbon dioxide. Therefore, you can easily prune all the leaves in the tomato plant, leaving just few on the top. You’ll immediately see that all the extra nourishment is flowing into the tomatoes.

Aside from this, it is much easier to prevent a well trimmed plant against fungi as it grows mainly on the damp areas and usually begins from the tomato leaves.

2. Remove all the alternate branches- A rich growth of alternate branches is seen on the tomato plants wherein one alternate branch bears tomatoes and the next one just leaves. Therefore, you can prune all leave bearing branches, leaving fruit bearing ones intact. Pruning tomatoes in this way provides more energy and juice to your tomatoes.

3. Don’t cut the branches, just pinch them-If the tomato branches are cut, there is a risk of their wounds catching some disease. Aside from this, the healing process in a stump will take lots of energy of the tomato plant. Due to this, the tomato branches should be pinched at their base and then they should be snapped off from the main stem. When a new shoot grows off after few days from the pinched area, you should wait until it is large enough and then pinch off once again. These baby shoots can even be grown separately into the new tomato plants!

Pruning Tomatoes – The Conclusion

4. Persistency pays- You should not stop the pruning of tomatoes even when the plants grow big and gain maturity. By regular pruning, your tomato plants not only stay healthy and disease free, they also provide you with a good harvest. Tomato pruning is often overlooked and most of the growers fail to pay adequate attention to it. However, if you have plans to get a great harvest from your tomato plants, it would be wise if you start pruning tomatoes on the regular basis as you’d definitely get your juicy batch of tomatoes in the end as a reward.