Video
Video Description
Pruning tomatoes plants is very important for fruit production and disease resistance. Pruning your tomatoes to a single main stem usually provides the largest fruit possible. Allowing multiple main stems usually results in smaller fruit, and it makes it very difficult to support your plants with stakes. If you want to grow tomatoes with multiple main stems, I suggest this tomato trellising method as shown in this video:
https://youtu.be/gxrAz8bWMXM
I do not recommend allowing more than two or three main stems because fruit size starts to suffer and the plants get very bushy and difficult to manage.
Staking tomatoes and growing them vertically is extremely important to prevent disease from killing your plants. Blight is the #1 disease that affects tomatoes, and it comes from soil-borne fungus. Keeping your tomatoes high and dry – not allowing them to sit in wet dirt or get splashed by rain ricocheting off the dirt – will help lessen disease pressure. This also helps prevent viruses and bacteria, such as leaf spot and a myriad of other tomato afflictions.
Pruning is also important to keep disease pressure lower. Pruning unnecessary growth creates more airflow. Airflow keeps your leaves dry, and fungi, bacteria and viruses need damp leaves to grow. The drier you keep your foliage, the less disease pressure you have and the best way to keep your foliage dry is to plant your tomatoes in the sunniest location possible with the best airflow possible. This is a reason why I don't like tomato cages, as they prevent airflow and promote disease.
This method will work for growing tomatoes in raised garden beds or earth beds or growing tomatoes in containers. If you have any questions about how to prune tomatoes, how to tie tomatoes, pruning your tomatoes for maximum yield, growing tomatoes from seed or if you have any questions about vegetable gardening and how to grow tomatoes in general, please ask them in the Comments below.
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