Learn how to prune tomatoes with our easy to follow how-to guide! You'll learn about the five different areas that need pruned on indeterminate tomato plants, best practices when pruning tomato suckers, and how to get the most fruit from your tomato plant this summer! Find more great tips like these on our blog http://www.saferbrand.com/blog

1. How to Prune Tomato Plants the Right Way

2. Tomato plants can become large, unruly, and disease-ridden
when not cared for properly. Learn how to avoid these by
pruning your tomato plants.

3. Should You Prune Your Tomatoes?
Yes – Indeterminate tomato plants (aka vining plants)
No – Determinate tomato plants (aka patio or bush plants)

4. 4 Benefits of Pruning Indeterminate Tomato Plants
1) Grow larger, more flavorful tomatoes.
2) Protect your plant from insect damage and diseases.
3) Ripen your tomatoes quicker.
4) Increase your tomato harvest.

5. Pruning ensures all the nutrients, water, and light go
to the main fruit and not to growing more branches
and leaves

6. When to Prune Tomato
Plants?
Prune your tomato plants once a week. Aim
to do it in the morning when the suckers will
snap off easily.

7. What to Prune?
-The top before first frost
-Suckers
-Dead or diseased leaves
-Overlapping stems and leaves
-The main terminal’s bottom branches

8. Topping
Last reason to prune is to get the most out of your plant before frost kills
it.
A month before the first frost, remove the top of the terminal to make
sure all nutrients go straight to the fruit to quickly ripen it.

9. Dead or Diseased Leaves
The lower leaves of a mature tomato plant eventually turn yellow. This is the
plant’s natural way of conserving nutrients for the leaves and fruit that matter.
You’ll also need to prune leaves if they look diseased or show signs of blight.

10. Sucker Shoots
Pinch suckers off that grow between the terminal and
branches. Cut off suckers after the last fruit flower that
grow out of the end of a stem.

11. Bottom Branches
Pruning the branches at the bottom of the terminal keeps
pests away, avoids diseases like blight, and allows you to
water and fertilize easily.

12. Overlapping Stems and
Leaves
When you are growing multiple tomato plants
together, prune any overlapping branches that have
no fruit. This ensures all leaves get light and
increases air flow, which will help prevent diseases.
Don’t over-prune! Leave enough leaves to protect
tomatoes from sunscald.

13. How to Prune a Tomato Plant

14. Simple Pruning
You can pinch young suckers off between the main
and side stems by grabbing the sucker between your
index finger and thumb and bending it back and
forth until it is loose to pull off.

15. Avoid using a blade unless the sucker is too big to pinch
off. When you cut a sucker off, the wound is more
perceptible to disease than pinching smaller suckers
early.
It’s best to use a razor knife to cut off any larger suckers.

16. When pruning multiple plants with a blade, use a sterol cleaner
like Safer® Brand Garden Fungicide on your scissors between
plants to reduce the spread of plant disease.
Dirty Tip: Spray your plants with our organic fungicide from the
middle to end of July to prevent blight.

17. Remove sucker stems thinner than a pencil.
If the sucker stem is thicker than a pencil it’s better to leave it on the
plant. It could do more damage than good by removing it.
Missouri pruning keeps the stem from stealing too many nutrients.

18. Missouri Pruning
Cut off the top of the sucker but leave a few leaves. This method gives
you more leaves for photosynthesis and to protect tomatoes from
sunscald, but the downside is that it will cause more work as it
continues to grow and produce other sucker shoots.

19. Take It or Leave It?
For most tomato varieties, you can leave one sucker on to produce new
growth for the tomato plant each time you prune, until you reach 4-5
fruit bearing stems.
Allow 2-3 suckers to stay on cherry and brandywine tomato plants.

20. Tomato suckers and leaves are great to add to your compost pile but burn
any leaves that have signs of blight or other diseases.
Get our free guide on how to compost here.

21. Remove Suckers Early!
Don’t be fooled into thinking more stems equal more fruit. It’s
important to cut off any suckers or unnecessary shoots from your
branches even if they could flower into tomatoes because they are
sucking the valuable nutrients away from already existing fruit.

22. Pruning isn’t absolutely necessary but it does help produce better fruit and keep
your plants from pests and diseases.

23. Pruning will help your plant feel good from its head To-Ma-Toes!
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