I'm Ron Patterson with Utah State University Extension in Carbon county.
Tomatoes are a very popular plant in the garden, and there are some things that we need to
understand about tomatoes, and then as you can see I've got my tomatoes in a high tunnel
which is a very valuable space.
So what I'd like to talk about today is how to prune tomatoes so that you can save space.
Sometimes we're in a small garden space, sometimes we're in a high tunnel.
Tomatoes have two different growth types, there's the indeterminate and determinate:
the indeterminate tomatoes are...they'll grow, the vines will grow long forever, forever,
forever - they're a perennial actually - they'll just keep growing until they're killed by
something.
The determinate type tomatoes are more like a bush tomato, they work better if you cage
those, but it just kind of depends on what you want to do.
If you've got a cage, then you can cage your determinate type tomatoes, I don't like those
narrow-type cages, down at...narrow at the base, I have wider cages that I made myself.
But for pruning for these indeterminate tomatoes we do what's called suckering, or sucker pruning,
they do it a lot on a commercial basis in the greenhouses and things like that, but
if you just have a small space, you'd like to have a couple of tomato plants, this is
really a good way to do it.
So we'll bring the camera in closer now and we'll show you exactly how we're going to
sucker prune these tomatoes.
Okay as we can see, this plant is growing good, it's got a good sturdy stem, but it's
got some..at each leaf axle...it will have a sucker growing up at each leaf axle.
Now because I planted these deep, it's going to have some growing up a little bit lower
as well, so you want to break those off until you get to this first flower cluster.
At the first flower cluster there's two approaches you can take: if you want to keep two stems,
you keep this first sucker below the flower cluster and then you keep the main stem.
These suckers at the leaf axle break off very easily - you can just break them off like
that - and you've done it.
Now these I've already done once before, I'll go through and as it keeps growing up I will
only have these two main stems for carrying flowers, so as they go up and they have more
suckers come off I'll just keep breaking those off and have the flower clusters.
About every second or third leaf you'll have another flower cluster on each one of these
stems, so if you want to do a two-stem sucker pruning, that's how you do it.
If you want to do just one stem, then you would break off this one and just keep that
main stem as it keeps going up.
Again, this only works for indeterminate type tomatoes, the determinate tomatoes do not
do well with this type of a pruning system, so you have to know kind of what you're doing.
These happen to be early girl tomatoes, most of your heirloom varieties are also indeterminate,
you just have to know which kind of tomatoes you've got when you're doing that.
Then the next thing you need to do, because these are going to be kind of tall and lanky,
is to clip these into place.
Now I have purchased a little plant clip that you can use; I have in the past just tied
the twine onto the plant, but if I take that little plant clip and clip it down low...if
I can get it onto the twine.
Okay just a quick explanation about these plant clips: they have little clasps which
will hang onto the twine, so it pinches on there and then it closes around a plant right
there, that way it hangs onto the twine and holds the plant down and you get much quicker
effect out of that.
I've done it where I've tied knots in the twine or things like that, and it just takes
a long time.
So this is a good time-saving device, wherever you want to get something like that, just
clicks onto the twine, hangs onto the plant and there you go.
And clip that around the plant, that'll hold on, and then about right below each one of
these flower clusters then I can clip another plant clip as it grows up, and that keeps
that supported up straight so that it looks...so that it keeps so that it doesn't break the
stem off as it kind of bends over.
In the commercial operations they'll grow these for nine, ten months or maybe even longer,
and they will have lengths on this twine that they can just kind of lay them down as they
go along and so it makes the plants or the flower clusters easy to reach and they do
that throughout the season until they're ready to clean out their greenhouse operation, or
wherever they happen to be.
Okay on this plant I'm actually going to keep two stems on this one, I'm going to have three
stems between each one of my supports.
And if you look here's that flower cluster, comes up, here's that first flower cluster
on the plant, so I'd keep the one stem below - right here - and then this is the main stem.
Everything else I want to prune out, so I'll just break off this sucker right here, there's
another one on this other leaf right down here, just break that off, and that one's
ready to go.
And as it gets taller, once in a while they'll grow up another sucker there at the leaf axle,
and so you just break them off as you go through and check your plants.
Okay so you can see at this leaf axle there was this sucker - it was right there - I just
broke that off, these break off quite easily there at the axle, and the leaves don't break
off very easily, so you know...that's one...one leaf - they have large leaves - that's one
leaf right there - and so you take off that at the axle.
You've got the flower cluster right here; this one I'm going to prune so this is just
going to be one stem going up.
Okay, just a few more trial runs so you can see - quickly - what I'm doing.
You really want to do these before they get that long, you want to break them off when
they're about three inches is better than waiting until they're this long, but they're
pretty easy to see if I do it this late.
There you go; that one's ready to go.
So a trellis system needs to be something that will support from above the plant, as
it grows up you can trellis, and the trellis all the way up here, and...as mine are growing
I'll even kind of trellis them across the top here; it's not so tall that I can't reach
it.
It's just important to have something so that those plants will continue to follow up and
not flop over and create problems that way.
What I've got here is a T post every eight feet and then in between it just another post,
it's not really stuck to anything, just supporting the trelliswork and that's...I can put four
plants in that area, trellis them up, got small space but it works pretty good.
That way I'm using upward space instead of spreading out and taking up a lot of space
that way.
So that's kind of a fun way to do tomatoes, just another way to play in your garden.