Pruning the Suckers off of Tomatoes

Yesterday while showing you the Florida Weave method of trellising tomatoes, I mentioned pruning the suckers off of tomato plants.  Let's look at the proper way of doing this.  Now, you're reading from a guy who plants seeds a little closer than recommended in the event that the germination isn't good and then I hate to thin things out because I don't like to kill perfectly healthy plants, so I don't always follow directions.

But removing suckers from tomatoes is a good idea and I've learned this from experience.  There are several reasons for doing this.  First if you leave all the suckers, they will flower and produce fruit, but the plant might not be able to support the nutrition needs of all the fruit and the resulting tomatoes will be smaller.  Secondly, indeterminate tomatoes (not the bush-type) grow and grow and grow.  If you don't remove the suckers, the plant will grow large, heavy, and out of control.  Before long you'll have a sprawling mess on your hands.  As a result, I try to remove the suckers as often as I can.

Let's first identify what a sucker looks like.  In the photo below, look at the second branch from the bottom that is reaching horizontally to the left.  In the crease between the main stalk and the branch, you can see new growth coming out at a 45 degree angle.  That is the sucker.

Identifying the sucker

When they are small to medium sized (pencil sized or smaller), you can just snap them off with your fingers. The plant heals up nicely and continues to grow upward from the top of the plant instead of bushing outward.  I usually toss the suckers over the fence to the chickens and they eat up the fresh, green growth.

SNAP!

Here is a photo of a sucker that I farted around and missed.  You can see that the main stem of the tomato has grown to the side (toward the 10 o'clock position in the photo), while the sucker is growing straight up. I did not catch this one while it was small.  There are two small suckers on the branches below it that I can still snap off with my fingers.  If I would leave this big sucker alone, the plant would become top-heavy and unmanageable, so I'm going to remove it.  I can't snap this one off with my fingers without damaging the plant as it is simply too large.  I'll take my pocketknife and simply cut it off.  The plant will right itself and straighten up and fly right (as Nat King Cole might say)! 

A large sucker

And that's really all there is to it.  A snap here and a snap there and maybe a cut or two and you're done. Your tomatoes will be large and your plants will be orderly and manageable.