The spring heat and unexpected rains have really benefited our tomatoes in a major way. These were among the first we put into the garden back in mid-April. No matter how much you water your garden, nothing beats a refreshing natural rain and a good fertilizer. You can see how these plants have really flourished over the past few weeks, and they are nearly growing out of control. It has been raining on and off for a few days. So this weekend, we grabbed the garden shears and some plastic-coated garden wire and headed out to tackle the job of pruning the tomatoes. The first thing we had to do was use the garden wire to train some of the sprawling vines to the trellis. We cut our wire into strips of 6-8 inches depending upon how thick the vine was and how close we could get it to the trellis. We twisted it on the fence side and let the loop hug the plant. Tomato vines are very sensitive and any rubbing or scraping can cause the skin to peel back from the plant. This can introduce disease to the plant. So do whatever you can to avoid any unnecessary damage or bruising. After we tied up all the larger vines with flowers, we examined the bottom of the plants to see if there was any leaf damage. Tomatoes do not like for their leaves to touch the ground. Any yellowing or spotted leaves that were touching the ground were removed. We used our shears for this job as we wanted clean, neat cuts to the plant. We discovered some large suckers growing near the bottom, some even had roots because the vines made contact with the soil. Tomatoes will root and sprawl along the ground if you don't stay on top of them. We cut some of these suckers and extra foliage off, because they appeared to weigh too heavily on the plant. We also cut off large vines or suckers that were growing below flowering vines and could not be secured to the trellis. Be careful that you only do this on indeterminate plants. Determinate tomatoes set all fruit at once. If you remove vines that have flowers or could potentially flower, you will decrease the productivity of the plant. The plants we pruned this weekend were a mixture of hybrid and heirloom. We have Better Boy, Park’s Whopper, Yellow Pear, Sweet Million and Lemon Boy growing in this box. They cleaned up rather nicely after we pruned away the excessive bottom growth that could potentially steal energy that could be used to produce nice tomatoes. In just a few days after the pruning, the plants extended well beyond the height of the trellis! We can't wait to begin to harvest a few.
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AuthorI'm a wife, mother, daughter, educator, writer and hobby farmer. Welcome to my world of simply living. Archives
December 2023
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