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Tomatoes - Leaves and Sucker Stems - Pruning

Q. I read what you said about pruning tomatoes. I have been picking off all of the sucker stems, and have removed all of the stems near the ground, but there still seems to be alot of foilage off of the main stem. How much sun should my tomatoes be getting? Do I need to prune off more foilage? The pictures of tomatoes in your seminar seemed to have almost no leaves at all, and my tomato plants seem to be a tangled mess of leaves. Thanks for your help.

A. Have you seen the pictures of tomatoes growing in the Food For Everyone Foundation garden at Utah's Hogle Zoo? Each page of the website gives you an opportunity to join the free gardening group. Sign up, then go to the Photos section and look at the folder Zoo Garden. You'll see that my tomatoes have many leaves, and yet many tomatoes are visible. Remember, the leaves are the plants' engine of the life process called photosynthesis!

The key is to retain all the leaves on the one main stem except those that are touching the ground or are old and dying anyway, and to trim them so they don't crowd adjacent plants. Tomato fruit can have more sun than most people give it, but don't prune for the sake of exposing the fruit to the sun. And don't do large-scale pruning. That is a shock to the plant, and will set it back - and can even make it susceptible to harm from insects or disease. Keep up with it as the plant is growing, and you will have healthy, productive plants.

Last Modified: 2004-07-19 Number of views: 3295