Pruning indeterminate tomatoes

[llatwood]

Hello, everyone! I'm new to gardening and to EarthBoxes, and I've been reading up as much as I can. (This all sounds dangerous so far, I know!)
For people with traditional gardens or raised beds and indeterminate tomatoes, I've seen that pruning suckers so you have a single tall stem (vertical growing) puts focus on fruiting, allows enough airflow and sunshine, and allows a greater density of planting. The OYR channel says if you do this, each plant will grow fewer fruits than it would unpruned (but I'm not sure this is what everyone has experienced?), but you can grow a greater density of plants. Other people  don't bother to prune, saying the leaves get energy to nourish the fruits, nature doesn't prune, etc. (But nature might not care about having lots of yummy tomatoes.) So I'm wondering: for the max number of tasty tomato fruits per EarthBox from my indeterminate plants, should I grow two plants (as officially recommended) and prune? Two plants and not prune? Three plants and prune? For what it's worth, I'm growing a mix of fruit sizes. Thank you!

[linear249]

Welcome to the forum.

I don't prune tomatoes planted in the spring.  It gets to be too much work when you grow a lot of tomato plants (15 boxes) and they are 6 to 8 ft. tall.

In the fall, I plant in a small greenhouse and I do prune simply to keep the plant size managable.

Follow the recommendations for 2 tomato plants per box.  To "prune or not to prune" is up to you.  How many plants, how much time do you have to devote, how tall you also plays into this.  I'm 5 ft, so there is no way that I could prune.  We have plants 8 ft and taller and usually need a ladder to pick. 

Also take into consideration a staking system for those taller plants.

Gardendoc has videos of box setup, shortcuts, chemicals, etc under Tips and Tricks.

Good luck.  Where are you located?  You can update that under Profile.

Aline

[gardendoc]

Welcome to the Forum.

The only tomato pruning I do is to increase air flow down low. Other than the odd branch that sticks out into my alleys I don't prune any thing else. I've spoken with tomato experts and have come away with any pruning or no pruning you want to do is fine. It all works.

[llatwood]

Thanks, all! I'm in zone 7, so it's all still a ways off. I'm just about to start seedlings now, and I'm just enjoying pretending it's spring already.