Survival Garden: Pruning Tomatoes (or Not) for Maximum Yield

Should you prune your tomatoes? Hi, I'm Kylene and I'm the Provident Prepper and today we are in my production garden and we're going to talk about tomatoes and the question we want answered is should you prune your tomatoes and if so how should you prune them? Now everybody has a different style and a different way of growing and there's no one right way or wrong way but there are some skills that we can invoke that will help us to be able to produce a better crop. For me, I actually like to grow most of my tomatoes in cages. I have some in the kitchen garden that I grow on a cattle panel trellis because that's where I grow all of my cherry tomatoes so that they're right outside my kitchen door and I can harvest them regularly. But here in the production garden is where I grow my big tomatoes that I'm going to be using mostly to preserve to use during the winter time in bottling or freeze drying or dehydrating. So I like to use a little bit different method and I like to fertilize mine using mostly sustainable methods like rabbit manure and if you notice you might not be able to see this here but my tomatoes are covered in this thick layer of wood chips and I have other things growing with them because some companion planting like some chamomile here and some peppers there are some beans vining up the outside and I really like to use more of the natural permaculture approach but that's not the only way to produce a successful crop of tomatoes. So today we're going to look at that and my friend Suzanne is going to take us into her garden and show us exactly how she prunes her tomatoes for a really high yield. Determinate tomatoes and indeterminate tomatoes are actually pruned differently. With determinate tomatoes they grow kind of a smaller bushy habitat and most of the time those tomatoes ripen almost at the same time and so those tomatoes we're not going to prune as much as we do the indeterminate tomatoes which are kind of the vining type. Most of your heirloom tomatoes are vining but in this row that you see behind me in my tomatoes in my production garden I have both determinate and indeterminate tomatoes growing because I really like Roma tomatoes and they are a determinant but they make a really good sauce because they're a thicker kind of a plum-like tomato and but then I also love the indeterminate varieties and those heirloom varieties so I have both so I have to be careful to really recognize which plant I'm pruning which way but if I make some really if I make some mistakes and don't figure it out these tomatoes are really hardy and they just kind of tend to be happy anyway. All right so now let's go visit my friend Suzanne in her garden and see how she prunes her indeterminate tomatoes. When I first heard about pruning tomatoes I had no idea what people were talking about. This is a tomato plant that has had no pruning and I'll just show you what I do. I like to take off all of these branches at the bottom. I like to prune about depending on the size of the plant eight or ten inches up because I don't want any of these branches to come in contact with the ground. There are too many diseases and things that come up by being splashed on with the water or some bugs can crawl up the leaves to the main branch of the tomato so this is the main leader of the tomatoes that's coming up. Now you can see right here this branch comes off and there's a big shoot that comes out right here and then there's a fruit shoot right here. This is a sucker and I'm going to take that off right there even though it's big and you can see it has some fruit at the top it's not going to be really good productive fruit and it's going to steal the energy from the rest of your plant. So right here now this shoot of fruit is going to have a lot more energy to be able to keep growing. These shoots here's a stem a leaf stem here's another shoot it's a sucker and I'm going to take that off again. What you don't want to do and these I'm a little bit of a loss from I was given these tomato plants so I'm not totally sure what kind they are but if you have things like yellow pear or sweet 100 or sweet million you don't want to do this same thing to them. They grow differently so you don't want to trim them this this same way but now you can see I've kind of bared that base stem I probably will just go ahead and take off that one too so that's got a nice beautiful straight stem it also makes it easier for me to get the weeds around you can see there's still a few weeds here that I haven't been able to get into without damaging my plant and now I'll just tie this back up to my support and keep watching here's another one of those little suckers these are small enough you can just take them off with your fingernail and it doesn't give you much heartburn to take them off when they're little like that sometimes when they have some fruit set on them it it's a little harder to to have the tough love but that's it's all for the better of the plant. Here's an example of tough love I didn't have the heart to do so the main stem comes up right here here's my 90 degree leaf shoot this whole thing right here is a sucker up up up here's fruit here's more fruit my soft heart won't let me prune that one clear off so that one will just stay this year and I'll just do better next year here's one more example this is coming out at a 90 degree from the main line of the tomato and I'm just going to clip it off and then the fruit is coming off right here right above that so that'll give much more energy to the plant. I'm just getting ready to tie these tomato plants up to the cattle panel and I need to do a little trimming here's another sucker you can see the main line the leaf shoot I'm going to take that one out back on this side this plant here has two suckers one here and one here now I'll fasten it up to the cattle panel from this side and this one from that side and just let them grow up and over the arch of the cattle panel. Through the year as the tomatoes grow if I start to see yellow leaves like this especially right down there on the bottom I'm just going to cut those off they're not doing anything to aid the plant and also if I see them start to come down to touch the ground I don't want anything that's going to touch the ground that's going to let the diseases and things work their way back up my plant so I'm going to cut all of these that don't look healthy off especially the first time of the year after I've done a good amount of trimming on the plants I'm going to give them a little extra fertilizer I've put fertilizer in the ground when I planted them and now I'm going to just rough up the soil a little bit and I have found this fertilizer if it's okay I'm not sure if I can promote a plant a product if I can I'll have Kyleen put the a link to it in the bottom in the comments it kind of comes out looking like rabbit food almost and I'm just going to work that into the soil a little bit it doesn't all have to be worked in but I'm just going to give it a little bit of a head start to get down into that where the roots are this is the fertilizer that I put in the hole when I first planted the tomato plants this is what it looks like it's got sea kelp and rock phosphate and a few things in it I don't know if it's any better than anything else but it's what's worked for me this year and I just put about this much in the bottom of the hole when I planted the tomato threw it right in and put the tomato right on top of it it's July here in Utah and I got a way late start on my tomatoes this year I was probably a good 30 days behind where I should have been just because of some other things that were going on these tomatoes that you're looking at right here have really taken off and I'm pretty sure that it's because I trimmed the suckers out and left the one main leader and it just really strengthens the plants and they are really doing a lot better you can see that it's starting to set a lot of fruit but even as big as these plants are I'm still going to go in and trim out some of these sucker shoots so you can see right here there's actually two there's a little one growing right here that just comes off with your nail but this one even though it's pretty big I'm just going to clip that off because here's my fruit vine right here my fruit stem and then I'll come in and just make sure that this attaches back up to the trellis here's another little one right here I'm going to get rid of that guy and then I just kind of look through the rest to see but you can see right here I'm getting good solid fruit because there's nothing to impede it okay I am at my friend Vicky's house and I love the way that she does her tomatoes she does it the easy way she doesn't prune them at all she grows a determinate variety celebrity and on this top layer here those are all with black plastic underneath them so she just punches a little hole and plants the plant right there in the black plastic which helps to keep the weeds under control and makes it warmer because tomatoes love the warmth on this bottom layer they're just planted in really healthy garden soil and they're flourishing there are so many tomatoes and pretty much all you have to do is water them and harvest them now this cucumber she actually has three cucumber plants right here they're growing up this windmill they are in a little garden bed and they're just highly productive so what she's done is created this beautiful edible landscape with very little work which is a fantastic idea especially if you are trying to grow some of your own fruits and vegetables in your own backyard and have very little time to do it tomatoes are one of my very favorite survival crops I love growing them in my backyard because there's something that can produce a high yield in a very small amount of space and require very little work whether you like to grow them using Vicky's method or Suzanne's method or you're just kind of crazy like me and do the whole really self-sustaining thing with the wood chips and the manure and the cages however you want to grow them it's time to try growing some tomatoes if you haven't and for the question of the day what tips or tricks can you offer to our viewers about how you grow your tomatoes right what have you learned over the years so comment below and thanks for being part of the solution