How To Trim Tomato Plants

Once you understand that the idea of trimming or pruning your tomato plants is to get as much nutrients as possible to the fruit rather then the branches or stalks. If you are training your plants to go up a stake or trellis you need to start by trimming or pruning the off shoots of the main vine once they have made one set of leaves. Often the fruit on tomato plants will grow in clusters and then go on to form a new branch. These new branches should be pinched back as to give all the nutrition to the new fruit. You may also consider growing 3 vines from one plant. This works the same way. Just train each vine to go up the trellis or stake and prune anything they try to push out after two leaves from the main vine.

Trimming your tomato plants is the best way to insure a good crop but there are other things you can do to boost your production. Better-Tomatoes.info See how I and others are feeding their families fresh tomatoes year round.

Keep in mind that once you decided to start trimming or pruning your tomato plants you mustn't stop. If you stop trimming or pruning sucker branches will take over and grow heavily. The tomato plant will not produce much fruit if trimming is stopped before the end of the growing season.

Start pruning at the beginning of the growing season when your plants start to show the first off shoots of vines. Pick one vine to promote and trim the rest or 2-3 vines to promote. After the first trimming you should continue trimming once a week for the remainder of the growing season. 6 weeks before the first expected frost you should nip all the growing tips from the tomato plant. This will allow the plant to focus all the remainder nutrients on the last of the fruit. New blossoms should be trimmed as well.