Commercial growers worry about things like ease of harvest and uniformity of fruit size, and they tend to have much more intense disease pressures than hobby growers. People who cage generally just let the plant grow as it will. Pruning is reserved for dying or diseased leaves, aside from aggressive removal of leaves from the bottom of the plant to keep foliage away from the soil. Some people will prune off growing tips once the end of the season gets near in order to try to ripen up the fruits already on the plant before frost. Others don't bother and say it doesn't make much of a difference. Some will cut off the tops once the plant grows as tall as the cage, but others will let the vines flop over the top of the cage and continue to grow and hang down. Regardless, the leaves are where the plant produces the sugars and other nutrients that go into making the fruit, so there's some logic to the idea of keeping as much of the foliage as possible. Disease is what you have to weigh against that, so it's a balancing act. Length of growing season is also a consideration. Is there a point in letting a plant get huge and wild and produce a gazillion flowers and set a ton of fruit if you don't have the time for those fruit to mature before frost? Also, if you want to plant a lot of varieties but have insufficient space to let them all grow into huge, caged plants and are OK with a smaller harvest from each plant, you could prune enthusiastically and grow the plants closer together. It's really a matter of what your goals and needs are.

mustangs - For relatively small amounts (1-cup or less), store your tomato powder in a dry environment - either vacuum-sealed or in a refrigerator (refrigerators are dry due to the frost-free feature). I keep a user-friendly amount in a pint jar in the refrigerator with some moisture absorbers in it (recycled from supplements we take) to keep it from clumping. When I open a #10 can of tomato powder I keep it free-flowing in a vacuum-sealed canning jar/s, FoodSaver canister, or some other container that can be sealed with a FoodSaver Universal Lid. I like to use the Universal Lids when I move food from long-term storage to the pantry, especially things I get in-and-out of frequently. -Grainlady

While it is really somewhat questionable to plant seeds from what are almost certainly hybrid tomatoes, since what you get may be a formally edible but unexciting fruit, it should be understood that planting seeds straight out of a plant is not optimal for germination. Mature seeds should be fermented, by placing them in water with some of the pulp and left in a warm place for a week. Then wash off the icky stuff and dry. Tomato seed harvesters know this strategy well. Here's why. When seeds mature, they are naturally encased in a protective gel coating. This is the slippery coating around seeds when they come out of the fruit. That gel coating has a hormone called abscisic acid that actually inhibits germination. That's why when you crack open a mature fruit, the seeds aren't all already sprouting! Microbial fermentation is an easy way to break down that gel, metabolize abscisic acid, and allow germination. Not all seeds have this protective gel. Solanacea and Cucumis commonly do. Some may say that, hey, I can plant mature seeds without fermentation, and they grow fine! That's because sitting moist in soil, especially anaerobically, the gel will break down naturally, But it will require more time, and may not work completely. That gel is natures way of making sure that new seeds don't sprout in the winter, but will wait a while, ideally until spring. FWIW, fermentation can also kill off disease spores.

I think February is the right time to plant out tomato seedlings in your area and you would be picking tomatoes in April/May/June. People in the deep south can also grow a fall tomato crop planting out seedlings sometime in August I believe. If you can keep the plants alive you should start seeing some tomatoes set when the weather starts to cool down with highs in the 80s as others have mentioned.