Optimizing Tomato Size, Health, & Yield by Pruning, Spraying, & Fertilization

Just getting through this thread. A lot of good advice already. Here are my experiences and advice, but it’s based on just 4 years of trying to grow tomatoes, so take it with a grain of salt.

I would like to emphasize the importance of mulch, it keeps the soil splash up on leaves to a minimum, which can contribute to some diseases. I tried spraying with Bonide copper, but it is time consuming, and will only delay the inevitable a few weeks, especially if it rains a lot, which it does here.

I don’t really pull off suckers, but that results in a sprawling plant, which requires more staking up of those new branches eventually. Usually my plants end up with 5-7 stakes holding them up. On some plants that are more established, I’ll prune off lower branches to minimize any splash up or ground contact.

For planting, I dig a deep hole, put in a few ounces of Tomato-tone fertilizer in the hole first and a bit of Epsom salt, then add a little dirt, then the plant. If the plant’s leggy, I’ll pull off the lower branches and bury it very deep, as the stalk will send out roots while in contact with the soil. Some advocate laying leggy plants in a trench, and just leave the top part above the surface.

After the plants have been in the ground, I give them a liquid fertilizer drench after the plant starts blooming.

As far as varieties are concerned, I’ve stated my best performers are Chocolate Cherry, Orange KY beefsteak, Russian Queen, Siberian Pink, Gordost Sibiri, and Jaune Flammé. Due to disease issues, I don’t grow San Marzano, and due to lack of production, I’ve stopped growing any Brandywine varieties. For whatever reason, we cant get purple tom’s to do well here, but we are going to try Paul Robeson again. We are trying maybe 12 varieties this year, most are some that have done relatively well in past years, as far as production, taste and disease resistance is concerned. We’re also growing a few new (for us) varieties this year.

We are growing three varieties we got from @Drew51, Girl Girl’s and Indian Stripe that did pretty well last year, and Romeo for the first time this year.

Due to all the rain we’ve had, we still haven’t got any of our tomatoes planted out, but hope to this week or next. Most of our plants are still indoors under lights, and the rest are some bought at a nursery.

2 Likes

It’s been interesting for me in reading about gardening the last 20 years how different people’s pruning techniques (or lack thereof) can be. I learned from my mom, who learned from my German grandfather, to trim all the lower leaves as soon as possible, remove all suckers, and trellis the plant. He grew gorgeous, perfect tomatoes in Bavaria. So that’s what I’ve always done. Works great, I grow loads of tomatoes. So when I read Carolyn Male’s iconic ‘100 Heirloom Tomatoes…’ I was gobsmacked to read that she just left them all to sprawl. Did she not know how to grow properly?? Of course, how you prune often has as much to do with your growing situation than anything else. Want to grow a couple hundred tomatoes? You are not pruning them the way I do in my garden. It would be a full time job.

I’ve come to appreciate that pruning lower leaves quickly slows soil-borne diseases. I can see it when I have plants on the ground next to others pruned my normal way. And pruning to an upright habit with limited suckers reduces the amount of space needed per plant. I can squeeze four upright tomatoes in the space I’d need to let two sprawl. So the way I was taught works out well for my raised-bed, limited space garden as well as my greenhouse. I’m certainly sacrificing per-plant production- but for good reasons.

2 Likes

Yes you’re pruning method works. I used to do it, but as my garden grew, the time to catch all suckers ran out! Now i rarely remove them. You have to do what fits you, no right method.
I have talked to Carolyn many times as a member of Tomatoville. She can no longer garden without help, People grow for her now.

I mulch my garden, and make sure there’s no bare soil under my tomatoes. I have cattle panels set up for my trellis and weave stems and branches through the wire, tying branches when necessary. I prune off lower leaves once they start putting on some growth. I used to let some of them sprawl on the ground if they got away from me but don’t do that anymore. Two years ago while picking toms in the morning, I lifted up a tomato plant that was touching the ground and found a massasauga rattlesnake underneath it.
I usually prune suckers, but I think maybe this year I shouldn’t do that as much, especially if rain is forecast, and see if that helps slow disease spread. I probably haven’t been very careful about that in the past. I was also going to try spraying copper this year for the first time and see if that helps at all. I only have about 30 plants and would like to see if I can get them off to a healthy start at least.

1 Like

Anyone here try using a Kelp fertilizer? I normally use Tomato Tone (3-4-6) in my raised beds which have a sandy soil with gopher wire underneath for all summer vegetables, but I’ve read that weed growers use kelp spray on their plants. I’m curious how well this would work on increasing tomato yield if one were to spray over the season. So far I’ve been spraying the seedlings and newly planted veggie plants with it 1-2x a week and they seem healthier and stronger than normal and were quicker to perk up and put on flowers. I’m just not sure if I should continue spraying now that they’re established in the beds and/or switch back to my biweekly feedings of Tomato tone.