nguyen1a, please ignore the article. It's pure hogwash.

Unless your goal in life is to limit your harvest to a handful of very large tomatoes, keep as many branches as you have room for and can support.

I was raised to prune to one stem, and even I can see there are significant disadvantages to doing so. The main problem is of course a woefully smaller volume of fruit. Another is a greater chance of sunscald. And with a single stem you have more chance of losing it all if a hornworm finds your vine, or hail shatters your main -- and only -- stem, or a borer tunnels into the stem (it does happen), or your ties weren't fastened quite as securely as you thought and the only stem breaks under the weight of the fruit, etc.

Agree. Pruning tomatoes is purely optional, is not required for any reason, mostly depends on your method of support, and costs you production so is to be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Lots of discussions here about pruning if interested.

Dave

You cant grow maters one foot apart either

You guys make great points. But I wanted to try something different this year(Although in my last 2 seasons, I just caged them with no pruning and didn't get much tomatoes. Too hot I believe here in Austin last year). 'missingtheobivious' you make a good point about alot to gamble with just 1 stem. I think my plan will be 3 stems with stakes 6" from the center of the plant. I will still have my plants one foot apart which I still feel is okay because there will only be 3 stems.

I also saw a video where they staked up zucchini. And everytime a zucchini fruited, they cut off the leaves below that point. And kept the zucchini growing upwards this way so that it had a pretty large/bare stem below new zucchini as it got taller.

That's funny nguyena! I happened to come across that article today while researching semi-determinates, and THEN I saw you posting!

I'm planning to do a lot of pruning of my hoophouse tomatoes that are growing up a single strand of twine. The out-of-the hoophouse indeterminates have a huge, heavy reinforcing wire cage, so I only prune around the bottom to get leaves off the ground and improve airflow.

Well, I'm a believer in pruning and staking. It has worked best for me over other systems tried (including neglect and sprawling) over 50 years of experience. Almost any system will work as long as the plant is allowed to blossom and set fruit, so then comes the arguments as to what is best and I think that has more to do with climate, soil conditions, and gardening skills and know how than method superiority.

I find specific types of tomato plants do better trained to double leaders while others can go to 3 or 4 and still do well. I did a lot of single leader pruning when I was growing for restaurants as that made the nicest and largest tomatoes and I had unlimited space to grow them in, and good equipment to handle soil preparation.

I'm in zone 6 and my feeling is that our weather zones pretty well dictate the solar energy available to our gardens. Too much solar energy seems to be harder to handle
than too little--for example in Florida. Plant spacing
has to do with available energy per square foot as well as soil fertility and the practicalities of access for harvesting, cultivation, and general horticulture.

I can't imagine plants at one foot spacing, even in rows far enough apart to allow access through the rows. I do 34" rows and 24 to 26" plant spacing, all grown on black plastic or heavy mulch and that is about what me, the sun, and soil can handle here in my neck of the woods.

Dave: I've searched for those discussions of pruning tomatoes and haven't found many. Those I've found are heavy on opinion and lacking in evidence. I always find your posts helpful, so you almost have me convinced that I should stop my long term practice of pruning to three leaders on a stake. I'm planning to use Texas tomato cages this summer, and considering not doing any pruning.

Larry: I'm in southwest Ohio and find many of your observations fit my experience. I also have great respect for your opinion. I can only grow six plants total this year, and each is a different large heirloom I expect to be quite large. I would love to hear you expand on your rationale for pruning when using a large cage.

To everyone: Do you have evidence that one method is likely to produce a significantly better yield?

Here you go - 100+ discussions on pruning. :-) If you really want to read them.

But you are right that it is strictly an "opinion" issue and depends on the type (det. vs. indet.) of tomato, what support system you use, what spacing you use (I'd never use 1' or even an 18" spacing no matter how much I pruned), your particular growing conditions, how many plants you grow, how much time you have to devote to plant care, and what your primary goal is.

Sooo - evidence of what? Less work if you don't prune? Amen, especially if you grow lots of plants. Better yield? That one is pretty straight forward. If you remove productive branches from the plant you lose production. Bigger fruit? Possibly but highly debated. Some studies show a mild, measurable increase in size of some fruit, some show little to none. More size increase seems to come from removing blooms rather than branches.

Overall plant health? Too many variables in the growing conditions provided to prove one way or another but pruning is removing the plant's primary source of photosynthesis and destroying much of its secondary circulation system so draw your own conclusions.

Taste? No way to quantify it. Plant size? The more you prune an indeterminate the taller the plant gets.

Been there and done that with stakes, sprawl, tripods, tepees, cattle pannels, cages, etc. So if you use stakes you will very likely have to do some extensive pruning. Same with string supports. Cages (real cages not the 3 ring things) none is required. Florida weave - none required. Cattle panels - some required.

To me the important point about the to prune or not to prune question is that the act of pruning is strictly optional, that there is absolutely no truth to the old wives tale that has hung around for a century and keeps rearing its ugly head that you MUST prune, that you MUST remove suckers, etc. That is what I take issue with.

Otherwise, once the gardener understands the effects it has on the plant, weighs the pros and cons, then it is personal choice.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Pruning discussions

Thanks, Dave. I see your search strategy is more effective than mine! I've got a lot of reading to do. I was taught to use 8 foot stakes and told that every single sucker must be removed. When I did that with common hybrids, like beefsteak, better boy and early girl, I got a decent yield of good size tomatoes. I only started growing heirlooms in the past three years, and fell in love with great, big pink beefsteaks. They have posed a lot more problems using this method. So I decided to try big, heavy duty cages, and probably will only prune the suckers near the bottom.

Pruning always seemed like too much work to me... and I always have more than I (or neighbors) need.
After reading this thread, I may experiment with pruning one plant and see how that compares to the other "au natural" plants.

Some tomato varieties want to send out a zillion suckers and even make an attempt at making a new leader out of a fruit
sprig or whatever it's called. I try to avoid these but if one shows up in my new varieties I'm trying I just whack the heck out of the suckers and try to train it maybe to 3 leaders and hold her down a bit.

I sure do agree you don't want to remove all the suckers.
I like cages but stopped using them because winter storage became such a problem. Were I just doing 6 to 12 plants I would certainly get back into cages-probably the ones made out of reinforcing wire.

I tried hogpanels and they worked very well but certainly limited my travel in the garden! Once again, the number of plants has a lot to do with what is practical.

I prune to the tips Of my fingers on top and when the plants reach the next plant on the side. Simple plan, excellent yield.