As a general rule, there should never be any leaves touching the ground.Ĭreating open space around the base of each plant is important for preventing fungal disease. Step 3: Prune Before Transplanting Be sure to prune off the lowest parts from your tomato plant before you transplant the plant.īefore transplanting your tomatoes, you should remove the lowermost leaves of the plant, leaving only the healthiest-looking ones. No mixing, soaking, or diluting is necessary. The simplest and most cost-effective way I’ve found to keep your pruning shears disinfected is to spray and wipe them down in between uses with a 70-100% isopropyl alcohol. This is important when pruning, as you are essentially damaging the plant, opening it up to certain diseases.īe sure to sanitize your pruners in between sessions and only prune dry plants to keep disease pressure down. All tools should be sanitized and sharpened. The next step in pruning plants is to collect the right tools. Step 2: Collect Pruning Tools Hasving the right tools that are clean and sharp is an important step in pruning tomato plants. Pruning and trellis or caging this type of tomato is very important to successful growing. Indeterminate plants are ideal if you want to have a little bit of fruit all season long instead of one heavy flush of fruit. These plants are sometimes called “vining tomatoes.” They will continue to grow as long as they are given something to climb up or trellis. They will ripen beginning with the lower clusters and move up the stem. If you are not one who loves to be out in the garden once a week tying up tomatoes, this type might be for you. There is little to no pruning necessary with determinate tomatoes because they stop growing once they set fruit. This type of tomato is ideal if you want to harvest all of your tomatoes at once in order to do lots of canning to have them available in the off-season. They are often referred to as “ bush tomatoes” because they only grow to be 4-5 feet tall. Determinate TomatoesĪll of the fruit on these plants ripens all at the same time, all within a short time frame. An important thing to note is that there is no real need to prune determinate tomatoes. Each type of tomato is grown for different reasons. There are two different types of tomato plants determinate and indeterminate. Step 1: Get to Know Your Tomatoes Knowing the type of tomatoes you are growing will help determine how you will prune them.

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