Before we talk about pruning tomato plants, we first need to know the part of tomato plants that is called the tomato sucker. The tomato sucker is the side shoot. If you see that there is a crotch between a branch and a stem, a part that is growing, then you are looking at the tomato sucker. If we leave these tomato suckers to grow, then they will become another main stem and they will have their own branches, fruits, flowers and even suckers on their own. So is tomato sucker a bad thing? The answer is no, but to get better results, we sometimes need to take them out.
Although the tomato suckers can grow to become another main stem, but sometimes we need to prune the tomato plants. This is recommended because when you have another main stem, then you will have two stems competing against each other to get the nutrients that they need. When this happens, the tomato plants will not be able to grow as healthy as they should.
When you think that more stems mean more fruit, then you may be wrong. Because the two stems are fighting for food, there will more chance that they will not both get the right amount of nutrients, thus not going to yield many fruits or if you do, then the fruit may not be as big as it is supposed to be with one stem. On the other hand, with one fully nourish stem, you can get more fruits.
Does this mean that we need to prune out all the tomato suckers that we find? Not really. It is all your choice. You can choose to leave out the pruning process. Many gardeners do. But at least you know the possible outcome that you will get when you do not prune the tomato plants. Even when you prune, you do not really need to prune out all the tomato suckers.
Those that not need pruning would be the determinate tomatoes. They do not need pruning so do not bother to spend your time to do this. The determinate tomatoes are more compact if compared to the indeterminate ones. The determinate tomatoes will reach a certain height and then simply stop growing. The determinate tomatoes do not yield until they are fully grown or at least almost fully grown. Once they do, they will bear all the tomato fruits at once.
