Special Edition - Pruning Tomatoes

For this special edition episode/article of This Week in the Garden, I’ll show my weekend project: pruning tomatoes. Pruning tomatoes is a great way to increase airflow and sunlight to your plants. In doing so, you should reduce insect and disease pressure, increasing the life of your plants.

The goal with pruning tomatoes is to remove branches and leaves that are creating moist, dark areas around your plants. These areas provide good habitat for insects to hide and are the perfect environment for disease to proliferate. I made a video a few weeks ago discussing some of the diseases you might see, and I’ve included an article from Clemson University showing photos of the diseases. If you think your plants may have a disease, pruning may be an option to help prolong your plant’s life.

When pruning tomatoes, it’s important to use a sharp pair of pruners. This will help make clean cuts along the branches, which will allow the plant to heal properly. Once you’re finished pruning a diseased plant, it’s important to disinfect your pruners to reduce the spreading of diseases. Disinfecting is still important even if you’re plants aren’t showing disease symptoms, because you never know what you might introduce when cutting the plants. After you’re finished, make sure to throw away any pruned foliage as it can spread diseases to future plantings.

The most important things to remove when pruning are yellowing branches. These aren’t doing any work for the plant and can become susceptible to pathogens. It’s critical to remove any branches that are growing along the soil or are rubbing into the ground. Another issue that needs addressing is any branches or leaves that are rubbing over top of another. This can create areas for pathogens to enter the plant. The last thing you’ll want to prune out is inner branches that are shading each other. If leaves are in the shade, they aren’t getting the full amount of light, and they’ll reduce airflow.

Pruning can be intimidating, especially the first time you do it. Be careful with your pruners near the stem and branches of the tomato, as they’re softer than tree or shrub branches, and a light scrap can open the plant to diseases. With that being said, get out there and experiment. There’s no right or wrong amount to prune your plant aside from the extremes of completely defoliating the plant, or only removing a leaf or two. My experience has been that tomatoes are hardy plants that will recoup from pruning and the benefits of opening up the plant far outweigh the chances of damaging from over-pruning.

That’s all for this special edition article from This Week in the Garden. Here’s a helpful like if you have any questions about growing tomatoes. If you’ve missed any articles check out our website where we keep them archived and fill out our form if you have any comments or questions. And of course, stay tuned until next time from This Week in the Garden.

-Adam