First off, can you tell us what you're experiencing as far as not
getting good crops? Are the plants themselves puny, or do they flower
but not come to fruition, come down with a disease, or what?

I don't believe pruning will do anything to invigorate your plants. I
rarely prune mine at all, and when I do, it's simply to keep them
within the confines of the garden. As many in this newsgroup have
advised, a good canopy of tomato leaves will shield ripening tomatoes
from the hot summer sun which can scald your tomatoes.

The first step toward any successful gardening is preparing the soil.
Make sure your soil has plenty of organic matter (compost), and I also
add plenty of composted manure and peat moss to my garden each spring
before I plant my crops. I grow my tomatoes in a raised bed, which
they seem to love.

Tomatoes like warm temperatures, so don't plant them out in the garden
until the nights remain consistently above 55 degrees. Also, give
them plenty of water, but don't get the leaves wet. Splashing water
can spread disease on the leaves, and depending upon the variety,
tomatoes can be fairly susceptible to all kinds of ailments.

Don't fertilize them until they actually set fruit (when you see
little tomatoes on the plants). Otherwise, the plant will use the
fertilizer to produce more foliage and you may never get tomatoes!
Some compost tea or manure tea mid-summer, after they've set fruit,
would be a welcome treat for them.

Experiment with different varieties. Right now I have 6 different
varieties, heirlooms and hybrids, growing in a 4'x4' space. It's
formed one monster tomato bush, but I've got all kinds of lovely
tomatoes happily growing in the tangled mass of leaves.

Best o' luck.

-Fleemo




(Richard) wrote in message . com...
I have never pruned tomatoes but equally never get very good crops.
Can someone give me detailed information on what is best. I am in
Berkshire, UK