Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ahh I see. That's a bit of a relief for me as mine are the "bush" variety. So basically I can just prune randomly to allow for better circulation and not necessarily have to attend to each fruit like in the pictures you have? I should probably take a picture because I'm still unsure what is technically prone to disease and whatnot.

I'm not sure about the bush variety, but if it's anything like the vine one, there will be some stems that never produce flowers. They look more like a vine, and are never the main tip, but always grow out from the main stem. I always cut these off, and then because I'm trying to keep my plants under control so they dont take over my little grow house, I cut anything that grows too far.

So the only rule I follow is to try not to cut the bits that are going to turn into flowers. But I'm not really after massive amounts of fruit, just enough so there's always one or two ripe. I think the method rup shows is designed to get fruit all at the same time as well to make harvest easy.

Just want to double check tomato pruning.

An earlier post Rupe seems to be saying take off all leaves below fruit. So if a truss near the top has fruit take all the leaves below.

What I have been doing is taking leaves off below the bottom fruit.

Also a lot of my trusses keep growing and then start growing leaves and turn into a branch. Presumably I should nip this new lead shoot off? Also take off all leaves on trusses?

another benefit that has not been mentioned about pruning is that doing so will help the available nutriment to concentrate on those fruit rather than leaves upkeep, some see this as wounding the plants and expose to disease.....this is why pruning is done with sterilised cutting tools and sterilised hands/gloves!
I've been regularly done my pruning in soil as well as AP and if I fall behind schedule with pruning I can definitely expect more leaves than fruit...it happen!

IMO manicure your tom's!

I'm much better with physical enginery type things.

Umm... the answer to my questions would be?

Hi Stuart,

In regards to your new shoots, we have been leaving ours on.

The result is that they have been very fast growing and are now fruiting too

SO, we are pruning in the above described manner for the main plant, and for these new shoots that fruit too.

I hope that assists,

Regards

So... just wanting to be clear of the two methods I mentioned which one?

Prune off the leaves, good or bad as they grow, they dont seem to need them and they just get diseased. Been slack with mine and they still produce well , but when in the green house I end up with an arm full of leaves for the chooks. Humidity is the enemy of tomatoes

This season was the first for me in having shoots come out the end of a truss or two (tommie toe) and I wasnt real sure what to do with them either, is this just a heirloom thing? I pruned some and left some, as Porter mentioned they grew another set of fruit although I found they didnt grow too well. This was just in my situation anyway.

Hey Mantis, do chickens eat tomato leaves?

Not wanting to appear thick but...

Do I prune

1. all the leaves below the top truss that has fruit; or
2. all the leaves below the bottom truss that has fruit?

My understanding and practice is no. 1

Lmao
Prune leaves below the lowest set of fruit. Trim off vegetive growth on fruiting clusters after an acceptable amount of fruit has set in that cluster. You want a good leaf canopy to shade ripening fruit so they aren't exposed to direct sunlight which can lead to cracking.

So that would be practice number 2 according to Ryan.

Sorry Matt I think I will go with Ryan on this one.

Another tom question.

What causes really short distances between nodes. Some of my tomatoes are tall with good spaces between leaves and trusses. Others are quite squat.

Hi stuart by the sound of it you have your old system up and running or have you a new system somewere
Last time I was past the old system looked unloved