Pruning tomatoes plants is important. By pruning we mean removing the side shoots (also called suckers). Tomato plants that have not been bound to stakes orhave not had their side shoots removed will become very big and be full of leaves and have only a few or small tomatoes.

An exception are the shrub varieties, they never have to be pruned.

The handiest solution is to push a sturdy bamboo stick (2 m long)firmly into the ground and bind the main stem of the tomato vine to it with string (jute string). This will keep the plant upright later on, when it is carrying heavy loads of tomatoes all at once.

Leaves grow out of the main stem of the tomato plant. Between the clusters of tomatoes are sequential sets of 3 leaves. The side shoots start at the base of each leaf. If you let these side shoots grow, they will form their own sets of 3 leaves and a cluster, 3 leaves anda cluster, etc. And in all those side shoots, other side shoots will grow from each leaf. In short, now you understand why the plant can turn into a thickjungleof leaves and stems. It will produce a disappointing number of tomatoes which will be hard to find between all those leaves.

Look for the place where the leaf is attached to the main stem; this is called the crotch or axil.

Grab the side shoot as low down as possible with your other hand.

That is how you check the leaves and remove all the suckers from the plant.

Once you have become handy at removing side shoots, you will notice that not all of them grow equally fast. The sucker that develops below a cluster grows much faster and issturdier than other side shoots. We call it the ‘Sucker below flower cluster’. The cluster should always get the highest concentration of sugars in the plant, but the 'sucker below flower cluster' (which grows closest to the cluster) can consume more of those sugars than the other side shoots. That makes it grow faster.

At our nursery, where we grow pot tomatoes, we also trim side shoots. Nowadays, removing the suckers is not so much work because we’ve stopped growing the long vine varieties, just special short varieties that are suitable for growing in pots. With Farmzy® Little Red Tree, we only need to remove the first 'sucker below flower cluster'. Then the plant stops producing side shoots and puts all its energy into the tomatoes. For Farmzy® Sweet King, we have to remove the side shoot at each axil. Farmzy® Red Love is a small tomato variety and we don’t have to do anything about its suckers. 😉