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Can anyone help me understand how to properly prune indeterminate tomatoes?

Just prune at the max length you want the to achieve. I have had them grow to over 20 feet uncontrolled. They will produce suckers and branch from there.
 
There's no problem with just picking a spot and lopping off everything above it. The reality is that everyone does it differently - you pick what works best for your situation. If you can run them up, though, know that you can also run them across, like up and then across the top of a fence (or whatever.) 
 
muskymojo said:
This is what I do.
 
I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about it, but it seems to work well.
when i started growing toms i read all the greenhouse handbooks.

1 vine tom cultivation is far and away the best from the standpoint of productivity per unit of land.

if you have lots of land though, it makes sense to go with determinates... almost 0 labor. it you want lots of toms on your 1/8 acre suburban house though? you really should run your toms up a string or trellis and go with 1 vine, and 18" spacing.
 
     What they ^ said. Space the plants about a foot and a half apart, trellis them and maintain one vine. It's amazing how many tomatoes an indeterminate plant can produce like this.
 
i have read that you can actually go to like 12" spacing pretty easily if you are 100% greenhouse without much wind exposure. if you are in the wind, it makes sense to add extra space to insure you dont get abrasions to the fruits from swaying.

i lost a watermelon vine to excessive wind recently. nothing to do with spacing... or toms, or anything really, just wanted to bitch about it i guess.

depending on the cultivars you can actually LOOSE productivity on a per plant basis, but as a whole you almost always get even better productivity.

the most productive greenhouses run rock wool slabs with 3 plants per slab which comes out right around 12 inches on center. imho thats the best, most productive system... but when you run that outdoors, you need to angle off the wines in a w shape so they have a few extra inches towards the top.
 
Hybrid Mode 01 said:
What they ^ said. Space the plants about a foot and a half apart, trellis them and maintain one vine. It's amazing how many tomatoes an indeterminate plant can produce like this.
aw dude, toms are INSANE. its really like no other plant ive ever heard of.

yea... they are basically bags of water so you cant really compare it to something like cereal or potatoes, but one tomato plant in a well managed greenhouse in a temperate climate without insanely hot summers can produce literally 80 lbs per plant.

ive seen pictures of greenhouses with like 10+ ' tall toms with another 20' of stem laying on the ground.

realistically you can assume every 3 -4 nodes you will have a fruit truss. and node spacing is around 2-4 inches.

so thats like 20 fruit trusses. lol thats a shit load of toms.
 
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