I'm making a real effort this year to stay ahead of the tomato jungle, to keep it under control, provide for a high-quality harvest, and hopefully prevent pests and diseases from moving in.
Today was the third round of pruning and tying for this season. Here's what things look like as of this afternoon:
As I'm going through, I'm looking for sucker branches to take out. These crop up in the middle of the juncture of the main stem and each leaf branch. They start small...
... but they can get to be huge. In fact, they can grow to be the size of the main stem if allowed to.
These sucker branches will produce fruit... eventually. If I was only growing a couple of plants, and had lots of space to give each plant, I'd leave many of these and let them fruit. However, given that I don't want the plant growing in all directions simultaneously, and am trying to keep my aisles clear, I take out all the sucker branches I can find. They usually pop off if you bend them at a 90° angle, but if they're stubborn, I use a hand pruner.
If the suckers are allowed to grow, they will crowd the main stem of the plant. Their leaves prevent air flow, and often times hide tomatoes that are growing down in the mass of foliage. Finding rotten tomatoes that were missed because they were buried too deep in the plant is pretty nasty - and attracts critters like flies, wasps and ants that I'd just as soon didn't set up shop in my garden.
I fasten the main stem to the trellis with a Tapetool. This nifty little gadget makes it quick and easy to fasten vines to my cattle panels, which are secured to T-posts to keep them stable.
Every time the vine tries to hare off in some wild direction, it gets tied back to the trellis.
The trellis and support ties keep the vines from breaking under the weight of the tomatoes. There are some big ones coming along nicely.
My "early variety" tomatoes, which are determinate types that stop growing once they start fruiting, also benefit from the support, even if they aren't nearly as tall.
I've also been experimenting this year with removing the leaves at the bottom of the plants that touch the ground. My rationale is that this allows me to see the weeds before they get huge, and cuts down on the amount of access for crawling bugs. If they want to climb up into the plant, they have to go up the main stem, and there's not a lot of cover for them if they prefer to hang out at ground level.
I suspect I'll need to be diligent and do this about every two weeks between now and frost... we'll see if my follow-through matches my good intentions.
I did find my first handful of ripe cherry tomatoes today - and ate all the evidence before I thought to take a picture! It looks like I'll have more soon - and I should be able to find them much easier this year.
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