Pruning Tomatoes

Red cherry tomatoes ripening on the vine

This year has been a year of learning (in so many ways) but I’ll focus this post on learning in the garden. I’m not new to growing tomatoes, so don’t judge when I say I had no idea tomato plants could be pruned! Even after growing up around large gardens and having my own garden for almost 10 years, I just learned about pruning tomatoes a few weeks ago from a post on Azure Farms. My mind was blown! The idea of pruning the plants was so weird! But the more I read about it and the benefits, like improved air flow and redirecting energy to produce more fruit, the more it made sense. So on the next sunny day, I grabbed my trusty pruning shears and walked out to the garden.

Bushy young tomato plant

Now, at this point, the tomato plants were relatively young, short bushes and I had a lot to work with but I was nervous about making a mistake. Maybe I misread, or my timing would be wrong and I’d kill the whole plant. But I trusted the information I read and took my shears to the first leafy arm and… snip. Not going to lie, it was satisfying. So I snipped another. And another. Before long, I had a huge pile of tomato branches on the grass next to me.

The key, I learned, is to cut off the leafy branches and the little “suckers” that grow between the stalk and the branch. Another truth: every time I prune I get the Jonas Brother’s song “Sucker” stuck in my head. It’s a catchy tune, what can I say. By clipping the suckers and branches off, especially towards the base of the plant, you help air flow more freely around the plant. Which makes sense because in past years, my tomato plans would be yellow and diseased by the end of July before I even got a ripe fruit. Also, these suckers grow into more fruiting arms. I learned this when after I didn’t trim them off and a few weeks later the plant had several more branches than when I pruned, and they already had small fruits growing on them. I couldn’t bring myself to cut them off so my plants are a little wild this year! Still learning over here…

Another great reason to prune the leafy branches is that it allows the plant to redirect the energy to producing more fruit. It was pushing that energy to the branches, but can now push to other areas like flowers that become juicy red tomatoes! As long as you have some leafy branches towards the top of the plant, you are still allowing it to collect plenty of sunlight.

I’ve been pruning my tomato branches now for a few weeks and I have TONS of tomatoes on each plant! Every couple weeks, I’ll get my shears out and prune a little more to clean up any new growth. And since the branches are disease-free, I can toss everything I cut off into our compost bin! Win-win.

Tomatoes of all shades ripening on the vine.

The final benefit in my eyes is the pruning just makes everything tidy. Tomatoes can get a little wild if left to their own devices, so helping yourself out by snipping off a few branches every now and then to keep the plants clean and accessible.

My brother’s family came over this past weekend (they also have a small garden at their house) so I gave them a quick garden tour of the new beds Evo built. I mentioned that I just learned to prune tomato plants and he said he never heard of that. A day later, he sent me a text saying he pruned all of his plants and it is such an obvious thing once you do it. Hoping they get a ton of tomatoes this season!

Happy pruning!