Our tomatoes are in full swing and looking like there’s going to be lots of sweet and juicy tomatoes in our future.

There’s plenty of debate on whether it’s necessary to prune tomato plants or not, but I’m Team Prune. I believe in the resilience of nature, so I don’t believe it’s necessary to prune tomato plants. HOWEVER, I do believe it to be beneficial. Not only does pruning tomatoes stimulate growth and increase air flow (which helps prevent common diseases like powdery mildew), but it’s also an awesome way to propagate for easy succession planting.

I regularly inspect each tomato plant and pinch off the little suckers – the small shoots, or leaves, that sprout out from where the stem and the branch of a tomato plant meet. With this practice, I always intentionally leave a few suckers to allow them to continue growing until they get to be approximately the length of my hand. Once they’re up to size, I snip off the sucker and pop it into a jar of water in the shade where it will start producing roots in less than 10 days. When the roots are 2-3 inches long, I pot the rooted sucker into a soil container and transition it to a partial sun situation for 5-7 days. During this phase, the new plant gets acclimated to soil and sun as it continues to strengthen its root system. In less than 2 weeks, I’ve grown a new tomato plant to extend and increase my harvest!

Throughout the season, I’ll continue plugging these rooted suckers into the gardens. When the peak of summer heat and humidity are causing some of my large, established tomato plants to wither and melt away, I will have a crop of new tomato plants coming up behind them in an effort to get another harvest in the Fall.

Did you know? : Indeterminant tomato plants will often produce up until the first frost!

Whether you choose to regularly prune your tomato plants or not, you should, at the very least, save the suckers. You’ll, surely, be glad you did!