My sister got me in the habit of clipping the stems towards the bottom of all tomato plants. I was kind of picking up the bottom stems & they all seem really thick--so I'm debating on whether I should leave them. Would clipping them at the bottom of the plant help it to grow better? Thanks.

For all you tomato lovers, I'm adding a few links for tomatoes. If you need a container tomato, I once tried Red Robin and it grew about a foot tall and produced an amazing number of tomatoes much larger than cherries. In fact I was amazed at their size and number for such a small plant: Dwarf container tomatoes The best paste tomato I ever grew from seed was sent to me by an Italian relative. The plants were literally dripping with tomatoes they were so loaded. Unfortunately it was the year we had the late blight, so I cannot attest to their flavor. But in terms of sheer production, I just never saw so many on a plant: Seeds from Italy-Rio Grande Tomato And this site offers heirloom and open-pollinated seeds: Victory Seeds And just as it says, this site is devoted to Totally Tomatoes: Totally Tomatoes Happy Gardening! PS: Apparently my link to Victory Seeds failed, but you can still contact them as this is the actual name of the company.

Not at all. It's an Old wives tale. Whether you remove none, some, or all depends on the type of plant (det. vs indet.), the spacing you use, and the type of support you provide. Just keep in mind that doing it will cost you fruit production. Go to the Growing Tomatoes forum here and read all the discussions there about this question. There is also a FAQ here on the question. http://www.gardenweb.com/gardenweb/query/suckers/topic=tomato Dave

I also typically prune indeterminate tomatoes to one stem except for heirloom varieties. For those I’ve been following Dr Adm Montri’s(Mich State) recommendation to prune those to 2 stems. And I’ll add that there are a few oxheart types that seem to look poorly and I allow an extra stem on those to develop. I too have had a few tomatoes so far with BER and I blame it on myself for not watering more when we had hot weather. I pulled a shade cloth over them for a few days, then the weather made a complete change and now I’m wondering if other issues will surface.