"mmarteen" wrote in message
...
I have been watching a lot of garden shows this season (Martha, Rebecca,
Victory Garden, HGTV etc.) and I recently heard two things about pruning
tomatoes. One was that you should cut all side branches from tomato
plants.
Not laterals but if there are laterals that branch out further.
Supposedly
these just suck energy away from tomato production.

Secondly, somewhere it was said that you should lop off the first blooms
on
a tomato plant because it will ensure bigger better tomatoes down the
road.
It seems to me that if this is true, it might only work for indeterminate
tomatoes not determinate ones.

Can anyway shed light on either of these two pieces of wisdom?


All I can say is that the size of the tomatoes doesn't matter if they're
cracked from the sun, and from uneven soil moisture. The canopy of leaves is
there for a good reason. Why screw around with it? With almost any modern
tomato variety, I find that 2 big plants gives me more than enough tomatoes
for a family of 3, plus assorted neighbors. I grow them in a simple, home
made cylindrical cage, 3' in diameter and 5' high.