Horticulture Notes:
Pruning Fresh-Market Tomatoes

runing helps maintain a balance between vegetative and reproductive growth. If you don’t prune or prune very little, your tomato plants will produce excessive vegetative growth with reduced fruit size.

Moderate pruning will leave your plants with smaller vines and larger fruit that will mature earlier. Pruning keeps plants and fruit off the ground, helping to control diseases. Although pruning requires a lot of effort, the benefits of doing so are more marketable fruit, easier harvesting, and reduced injury to plants when multiple harvests are being made. This practice is most profitable when a long harvest season is possible and when there is uniform fruit production over the season.

The most common method of pruning is to prune to a two-stemmed plant by pinching off lateral branches (suckers) as they appear in the axils of each leaf.

To achieve this balance, remove all the suckers up to the one immediately below the first flower cluster. A single pruning will usually be adequate, although a later pruning may be needed to remove suckers growing from the ground at the base of the plant. Suckers should be removed when small, no more than 2 to 4 inches in length, because letting them get large wastes plant energy and provides an entry point for plant pathogens.

Prune early in the morning after plants have dried. Indeterminate varieties may need to be topped if the vines grow above the top of the stakes. Use a knife or machete.

For more information, contact your county Extension office. Visit http://www.aces.edu/counties or look in your telephone directory under your county's name to find contact information. Issued in furtherance of Cooperative Extension work in agriculture and home economics, Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, and other related acts, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Alabama Cooperative Extension System (Alabama A&M University and Auburn University) offers educational programs, materials, and equal opportunity employment to all people without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, veteran status, or disability.