Tomato Pruning

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Among the huge number of vegetable crops, summer residents and gardeners give a special place to tomatoes. As a rule, such plants are grown in a greenhouse, although the conditions for their development in the fresh open air are not uncommon

Tomatoes are very healthy vegetables that both adults and children love. In plant growing, a huge number of their varieties are noticed, but all of them, during cultivation, require such a procedure as pruning. A summer resident will be able to observe a good harvest if all the techniques and processes for caring for tomatoes are carried out correctly and competently. It is important to remember that it is necessary to monitor the qualitative elimination of brushes and leaves from tomato bushes.

When a gardener plants different varieties of such vegetables in a greenhouse, he must understand that not all of them require pruning. It is not necessary to carry out this procedure for such varieties of tomatoes as "Aquarelle", "Vityaz", "Lord", "Duck" and some other popular varieties. Newcomers to the world of gardening are often faced with the problems of cultivating vegetable crops belonging to undersized varieties. Such varieties do not require careful and complex self-care, and with a harvest they can please any owner of a personal plot, saving his time and effort.

What do you need to prune tomatoes for?

First of all, the main purpose of tomato pruning is to create the correct and neat shrub shape. In addition, immediately after the procedure, there are many factors that have a beneficial effect on the growth and development of vegetable crops. For example, tomatoes are exposed to much more lighting after pruning than before this process. As a result, the vegetable bush grows and develops much faster and more actively. After discharging, tomato bushes receive excellent air exchange rates, due to which the risk of tomatoes getting various injuries, diseases and damage by harmful insects is reduced several times.

By removing excess brushes and leaves from tomato bushes, the fruits on the bushes ripen in the shortest periods of time, and the tomatoes themselves become not just high-quality, but strong and large. It is important to understand that pruning is one of the most important procedures, during which it is necessary to take into account how many leaves should remain after it, and at what time it is necessary to remove excess parts.

Tomato pruning

Before planting tomatoes in a greenhouse or greenhouse, you need to take a very responsible approach to the problem of studying the varieties of this vegetable crop. Most attention should be paid to those varieties where the height of the bush can reach one meter or more. At the same time, such tomatoes need special and rather difficult care, since tomatoes are almost always susceptible to the formation of various diseases.

But nevertheless, tomato hybrids respond to competent observance of all conditions of care, and pinching and pruning a tomato is actually not so difficult to perform. It is best to carry out the last operation at a time when the tomato bushes will already have a rather big growth and become stronger and more stable. The number of leaves to remove and the optimal time for the process depends directly on the tomato variety. The pruning itself must comply with the recommendations of specialists in order to avoid damage and all kinds of errors.

During tomato pruning, it is necessary to eliminate yellowed and old leaves, as well as those elements that interfere with the normal development of the fruit, thereby reducing the yield. If you cut off the leaves under all the peduncles, the nutrients will penetrate deeper and faster into the fruits, making them juicy and fluid.

Why is it necessary to remove the leaves?

Processes in the form of stepsons do not carry any benefit, but are formed with the help of leaf sinuses. After the eighth or tenth leaf that has appeared, the so-called fruit clusters are formed. Then, most of the useful components, when it gets to the tomato fruit, directs its action to maintain the vitality of the stepsons and leaves located at the bottom of the bush. That is why you can observe a decrease in fruiting in a tomato bush if the leaves have not been pruned.