Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This has worked for me for years:

Prune all lateral growth below your first fruiting stem.

Prune most other lateral growth that does not have flowers, leaving the top 20cm of new growth. In time you will be able to assess non fruiting new growth very quickly. Be ruthless and prune this growth as soon as you recognize it. You want ur plants energy going in to fruit and flowers.

Stake ur plant and also support the parts of the plant that are heavy with fruit/flowers.

You will end up with plants that won't win beauty contests but will win yield contests. Tomatoes also like to have some wind movement around the plant and getting rid of excess vegetative growth helps this.

Hope this helps.

TT is on the money about pruning laterals, and excess leaves.... you can get to the stage where you can effectively "train" your growth laterally....

Not pretty, but effective...

read that once, but lost my nerve when doing it

obviously works guys. good one.

Was sure i read somewhere that the plants used energy reserves in leaves to assist in flowering? dunno

And the commercial hydroponoic tomato houses are even more savage...

The plants are actually lowered as they grow and fruit....

(Pic is of Jim Farr and his auto pot system, but uses the same technique as applied throughout the industry)

OK, you got me with that one is it just new lateral grwoth thats trimmed, or the old as well?

Once they've flowered and the fruit has set, the lower leaves are essentially superfulous and begin to die off....

In the mean time, being larger, they just transpire larger amounts of water and burn plant sugars for no effective purpose..... lop them.

Predominantly the case with determinate varieties. Indeterminate are lowered on strings along the ground, with old growth being cut off. No lateral training however. Our stems are often allowed to lay along the ground up to 15 feet or so.

Got any pics to show people what you mean raimiuso

Thanx for the pics Rupe, i didn't have any and it is worth a thousand words as they say.

is there any better way to tie up the tommies?
everytime i try and string a tomato stalk it dies after awhile, even if I leave it quite loose.
is there like a tape or something? or even rubber ties. I know you can get rubber ties for larger plants, is there something similar for the smaller ones?

panty hose is good for plant ties (now shush you lot :waggingfinger: )

i used strips of rag to tie mine up about an 2.5 cm wide and as long as you need

who has pantyhose these days, well my wife doesn't that is for sure. the only pantyhose I see is on the net (and that usually is in the form of spam or popups!)

Tie them around the stalk, cross them between the stalk and the stake and tie around the stake.... basically a figure eight....

gives support but allows movement.... can be easily loosened if needed.

I use cages for my tommies. I just weave the stems back into the cage if they get out of hand!