Heavy Pruning

I leave the considerably stubs to help with lacing the
support twine around the stem

I feel good right now, I think I'm hot stuff!

I pruned the bejesus out of my Tomatoes (I'm happy with them, I wanna show respeck with a capital "T")  I knew I needed to do it, I've read bits and pieces here and there how pruning tomatoes increases yields, promotes strong stem and root growth and helps prevent disease and pest problems from soil born threats.

I've been pinching suckers since they were 4" tall and even more frequently lately as they've been in the ground and growing more rapidly.  What I didn't realize is that I had missed some suckers early on and they had grown to the size where I thought it was just a "split stem" plant - a tomato that had forked into two main stems, a Siamese-tomato plant.

I didn't give the "two stem" issue much thought until it came time to string them up to the supporting trellis and twine drops - suddenly I'm faced with a decision of which stem to support!  Literally, I'm standing there, mud on my knees, AM talk radio in the background, Corona shears in my back pocket and I'm just looking at a plant kind of having a prolonged brain fart, paralyzed by this seemingly simple quandary.  I denied my gut to google and instead thought critically, leveraging whatever fragments of recent information I had read on the subject.

You know I'm excited when I draw
Actually, drawing, like writing has the great effect of burning things
into my memory for a long time - this just an archival technique...

It paid off, I had my "ah hah" moment when I realized that in every single case one of the "stems" (aka twins) has a branch at it's shoulder, in many case I had already pruned the branch but the stub remained.  Given that suckers grow in the crotch of the stem and a branch I deduced that the "stem" with a branch right under it had to be the sucker.

Out came the shears and off went some seriously large suckers and branches.  There is something invigorating and exciting about heavily pruning a healthy, seemingly thriving plant - it requires confidence in your decision and action

I'm expected these plants to hit 6+ feet in height, it's
important to get the structure correct and the support in
place for their future growth

I really did it enjoy it, I went sort of nuts and reduced the overall mass of the tomato plants by an average of, oh I'd say 30%.  I then spent the next hour carefully stringing them up.  I feel like a big task is behind me and I've added a new skill to my repertoire that I will be able to use for the rest of my life - that's a feeling that's hard to beat.