Hmmm, My plants are 4' apart in rows that are 5' apart. So my plants aren't "heavily over crowded." The issue is that the San Marzanos develop a lot of stems from the main one and tying loosely to the stake results in a interwined tangle. San Marzanos can easily grow to 10 feet in length. The tomato cages that I see at garden centers are about 4' high with 6+ inches to be inserted in the ground. THAT is the reason I use 2"x2" stakes 6' long driven a foot in the ground. Granted, pruing does decrease production, however proper pruning has been around as long as agriculture. e.g. If you don't prune fruit trees you'll end up with a lot of little fruit instead of the size that you want. Also, ever not prune your grapes??? :-) Also, I believe that tomatoes are fruit? Guess I'll do some judicious pruning and report back if anyone's interested. Ev

Mia, You can relax. Y'all are safe from further photos. When God passed out the photography gene and the technology gene, I was out playing in the garden and missed out on both. As Carol noted, my adult son took the photos. He not only took them, but he also uploaded them (or whatever you call it) to his photobucket account. Then, he emailed them to me one by one so I could save them on my computer. Then he emailed me a document that said "How To Post Photos On Gardenweb". I thought it would be something that actually told me how to post photos, but it was just six URLs--two for each of the three photos. He said for me to try the first group and if they didn't work, then to use the second group. Well, the first group of URLs didn't work, but the second one did. So, the extent of my involvement in the whole thing, other than lining up all the tomatoes on the little table and then putting them back into bowls to carry back into the kitchen afterwards, was to cut and past the photo URL into the box that says Optional Link URL. I have so much trouble doing anything on a computer that I was sure it wouldn't work, but it did. Maybe one day I will master the art of taking and posting photos, but generally I don't even have the patience or the time to try to do it. When Chris tries to explain it to me verbally, his words go in one ear, scramble themselves up in my brain, and become virtually indecipherable. Then they fly out of my other ear and I do not remember one word he said. I think I have technology dyslexia. Remember in all the Charlie Brown/Peanuts television cartoons that when the adults speak, the kids hear something like "wank wank wank wank wank"? Well, that's what my brain hears when anyone tries to tell me how to do anything involving a computer, a smartphone (my phone is smarter than me), or a camera. I am the only person in the world who goes into a phone store and says "I want a phone that is just a phone. I don't want a phone that has a camera or internet service or anything else. I just want a telephone." When my last little Motorola Razor phone died about a year ago, my former daughter-in-law gave me her old smartphone and it is too smart for me but I guess I am stuck with it now. Tim and Chris keep telling me I am eligible for a phone upgrade and should get a newer, better smartphone with more capability. My answer to them is "why?". That leaves them stumped because they know I use my phone mostly for phone calls and text messages so a fancier phone that does cool stuff still would be underutilized by me. Anyhow, what y'all have to understand about me and "time" in the summer harvest season is that I have a big harvest of something, like the Saturday tomato harvest, at least a couple of times a week. I then work frantically in the kitchen trying to preserve however much of it we cannot eat fresh. By the time I have cleared counter space in the kitchen and can breathe a sigh of relief, it is time to harvest again. In the last two weeks, we have had multiple harvests of onions, summer squash/zucchini, plums and green beans that equal or exceed the amount of tomatoes shown on that table, so I am always severely time challenged at a time when I actually probably would enjoy taking and posting photos of all the bounty from the garden if only I had the time to learn how to do it and then to do it. I do not yet know what 2012's harvest will be like overall, but so far it resembles 2010, when I spent probably at least six straight weeks processing food, mostly via dehydrating and canning, for about 18 hours a day every day. In either 2008 or 2009 there was one horrible week when I actually counted the peppers piled up all over the house awaiting processing and there were 1800. Now, at least 600 to 800 of those were tiny bird peppers and all I did with them was wash them and put them in the dehydrator, but dealing with the rest of the peppers took a couple of weeks of hard labor and, in the meantime, I was continuing to harvest more. Today I am supposed to harvest zucchini and summer squash from my 33 plants (saturation planting was my goal this year and I'll have to explain that later 'cause the tomatoes in the kitchen are calling to me and telling me I need to get busy canning them), green beans from the white half-runners, cukes from the pickling cucumber plants (guess what that means?), and harvest tomatoes again because they are ready today and ripe tomatoes won't wait. I also need to harvest jalapeno peppers. Oh, and dig potatoes. And lay out the drip irrigation lines in the whole garden, weed and mulch the mid-season and late-season corn, and spray the tomato plants with Daconil. Other than that, I have nothing to do today except we need to mow and weedeat 3 or 4 acres in an effort to chase away grasshoppers that prefer tall grass and predator animals that like to remain hidden in it. The downside to cutting the tall grass is that then the bobcats jump the garden gate and hide in/under the tomato plants where they scare the you-know-what out of me when I see them there. Tim and I joke that we've had 'new' lawn furniture for 8 years and never have sat on the chairs or the glider. That's not much of an exaggeration, but the cats love the lawn furniture and sit on it all the time, and our 120-lb. Rottweiler sits/lays on the garden park-style bench all the time. It is now his bench and not mine. Carol, It is a ridiculous amount of tomatoes to have at once. We cannot possibly begin to even eat one of each variety fresh before they get overripe. I've given away about 7 gallons of them so far, and today I am dehydrating the bite-sized ones and turning the others into yummy tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes or strained puree. Maybe I'll make salsa. The possibilities or limitless, though the time available is not. I hope your tomato harvest comes in soon. I know you'll have a great harvest. Y'all know mine is early because I am so far south and because I planted a month early. Keith, By now you've read my explanation to Mia about how technologically challenged I am. Nothing I said is an exaggeration. I have so much trouble with technological things that I still am amazed every time I send an email or a text message and it actually arrives at its intended destination. Every year I set a goal for myself in the garden. Really, I have two new goals every year, and I am sad to say that they are the same two new goals every year and I fail miserably at both every year. Goal #1 always, always, always is this: "This year I will spray every tomato plant with Daconil the very first day I put it into the ground, and then I will do preventive spraying with Daconial, alternating with some other fungicide, on a regular basis for the whole season." This has never happened. It never even has come close to happening, although I think I did spray my container tomato plants with copper in either 2008 or 2009 when they had Septoria Leaf Spot. In fact, I actually did buy Daconil in April 2012, about a month after the first tomato plants went into the ground, and I sincerely meant to use it. So far, it remains unopened, just sitting there on the potting bench in the potting shed like some sort of cute decorative object. I do intend (insert incredulous laughter from my husband here) to spray the tomato plants with Daconil today. The last time I bought a garden sprayer so I could spray the plants with Daconil or copper, it sat unopened in the cardboard box for two years. I hate spraying anything on my plants. I finally opened that box with the new sprayer this year and sprayed Bt on the garden when the variegated climbing cutworms were decimating my garden. The second goal is always the same: "This year I will figure out how to take photos, how to find them on the phone again after I take them, and how to transfer them to something on the computer so I can post them. Then I'll learn how to post them, and I'll do it until everyone is sick of looking at my garden." So, tell me how I am doing on that goal? (insert laughter here) If gardening required me to be high-tech, I couldn't garden. Now I am headed off to the kitchen to get out the tomato strainer and start working my way through all those bowls of tomatoes. Then, after that's done, I'm gonna go outside and pick more tomatoes and then spray my plants with Daconil. Y'all probably shouldn't waste your time expecting to see a photo of more tomatoes today because Chris is at work! lol Dawn

Can anyone please help..it is our first time gardening and we have 12 heirloom tomato plants which are out of control and very overwhelming...does anyone have pictures of what a pruned tomato plant is suppose to look like? I have a picture of ours, but not sure how to post it on here...I think I might have butchered 2 tomato plants because I really pruned them yesterday, but there were sooo many little bugs flying around I couldn't stand it any more, and I just sprayed for bugs on Sunday...Please help! I am confused and overwhelmed! Thank you Jrshurli in AZ talktojami@gmail.com

HI Thanks for getting back.. I am loving the novelty here. really just putting them in clusters on the plate is beautiful .. but as you know, they are abundant. A friend suggested a little appetizer.. mix 2/3 part salt to 1 part sugar, simply dip the tomatoes in vodka then dip in the aforementioned mixture.. might be fun. kind of like we used to do with strawberries , sour cream and powdered sugar back in the 70's.