>>294203Pruning is important. Like humans, plants need 'haircuts' too. The plant has a certain energy expenditure and the energy will be sent out all over the plant. For instance, when the tomato plant first was growing, someone kept adding nitrogen [the first number; 24; or N-P-K] rich (24-8-16) fertilizer to it and nitrogen causes deep green, thick, stalky vines on tomatoes and discourages fruit or flowers. To correct that, I started giving it 10-60-10 (bloom booster for flowers and vegetables) and cut off the lower tomato vines near the bottom. This was effectively telling the tomato 'if you keep producing more fruitless vines, you're going to get cut off!'. Soon, flower bunches started to develop and the tomato wasn't growing as tall or as thick and concentrated on the flowers. The '60' or Phosphorous is essential in flower production. Now the tomato plant was flowering but not setting fruit (flowers would die and no tomatoes grew) so I cut off tiny flower bunches or new ones to discourage it from creating flowers and spending energy towards setting fruit. Finally, after 7-8 months its producing lots of fruit! One is reddening now and I need to find a way to keep it protected before the birds or squirrels eat it but I'm not sure how to solve this problem yet. In december, something took a bite out of the very first tomato the bush produced so I know something probably has its eyes on the three large tomatoes currently on the plant.
Think of it this way... would you rather have 100 small tomatoes or 50 large ones? When you prune it, you're redirecting the energy the plant has towards leaf production/vegetation, fruit production, flowers, or roots and general growth. How you prune it will 'tell' it to grow a certain way. You can also train certain plants to 'climb' or grow a specific way by trellising and staking them. Also before I staked the tomato, it was growing sideways but once I tied and staked vines and cut the side growing ones, it is now growing upward
