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Can I top and keep a Tomato Plant short and still produce?

Tardis

Tardis

I have been growing an Ivory Pear tomato in a 5 Gal Pot (so i'm told 3.8 Gal really).  I let it run wild.  Its much too tall (probably 8-9 feet tall but bent all around everywhere) and a lot of its leaves are brown and dying, but its very productive just looks bad.  I have it leaning over other tomato cages nearby.  I finally had one of the Tomatos go ripe today and picked it, sliced its yellow in half and ate it and it was sweet and delicious.  Enough that I may want to grow it again (probably from seed from one of the tomatos).  However I dont' want it that tall and cumbersome. So as an amateur Tomato Grower (ate 2 tomatos from 2 plants today, first time ever tasting tomatos I grew) I have  question.
 
Can I grow the Tomato Plant to the top of the tomato cage, top it, and continue to cut the top off every time it grows to keep it short and still have it not lose its productiveness?  I'm told I should pick the suckers so they don't use up energy.  If I were to pick the lower area of the plant for better watering and less disease, then keep cutting the top to keep it short, will it still focus on producing tomatos?  I ask because the tomatos produced all seem to be far above the top of the tomato cage.  Will they start lower if there is no top?  Would this just wind up producing a plant which doesn't have tomatos?  Newbie question i know but very curious.
 
Everything I have read says not to do this to tomatoes as it will lead to a loss of potential fruit, but i have personally never tried. If you do try it please post some photos of topping and later stages through out the year.
 
Sorry, I cannot answer your question, but this is the reason I'm growing the bush goliath. It stays about 3' tall, but pumps out tomatoes. Nearly 100 % feedback from reviews.
With dynagro I was getting 1 pounders.
 
I'm going to try and be as succinct as possible here cause there's a lot of info and i strongly suggest you look into it further -
 
two types of maters, determinate (will only grow and fruit for so long then its done) don't prune a thing.  Indeterminate (will grow and fruit as long as conditions allow) you want to prune everything under the first flowers, (obviously you need to wait for the first set of flowers) then you should allow it to branch by leaving a sucker I only do this once just for ease of harvest but up to three times is possible. Pinch, snap or cut off all other suckers as  they only weaken the plant.  You can actually plant them if you want.  You could cut back a plant like you're suggesting but you would want to cut it in half so the suckers that then grew would have enough space to grow and then fruit again before being cut back again this would slow down production though.
 
Good information there, I will try pruning everything below the first set of flowers on a couple plants this year and see what kind of difference it will make.
 
I prune all my indeterminates heavily and they still produce like crazy. I'm sure they'd do better if I left them alone, but I don't have any 10 foot trellises! I also cleanup the bottoms, determinates too, but don't remove many "suckers". My goal is to get a good yield but not a huge mess come fall. Selective pruning also reduces blight, bacterial leaf spot.
 
hottoddy said:
I prune all my indeterminates heavily and they still produce like crazy. I'm sure they'd do better if I left them alone, but I don't have any 10 foot trellises! I also cleanup the bottoms, determinates too, but don't remove many "suckers". My goal is to get a good yield but not a huge mess come fall. Selective pruning also reduces blight, bacterial leaf spot.
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i prune mine to single vines and hang them on a single line trellis.
yea its alot more work than id like to do, but its the simplist way to grow a tomato. each plant needs like 30 seconds of attention per day. pinch out a sucker, twist the new growth around the wire... clip to wire wire 2-3 nodes, and lower the plant a few inches every other day.
 
the lower stem gets pruned clean and coiled around the base. ideally you would have plastic mulch to keep shity bugs and splashing soil off the coiled stem.
 
its a super productive system provided you get good cultivars, but super annoying  to keep up with especially when it gets dark and you know you need to work over your plants.
 
if you slack off... when you go to lower the plant down you end up breaking the stem. you need to lower it inches at a time, not feet. ask me how i know this.
 
this is a very clean very very highly productive method that id encourage you to try or revisit. its what they use in huge commercial grenhouses. they however usually have like 15- 20 foot ceilings so they coil much less stem. 
 
but with an 8' trellis you just need tippy toes not a scissor lift to work the plants lol.
 
Topsmoke said:
I'm going to try and be as succinct as possible here cause there's a lot of info and i strongly suggest you look into it further -
 
two types of maters, determinate (will only grow and fruit for so long then its done) don't prune a thing.  Indeterminate (will grow and fruit as long as conditions allow) you want to prune everything under the first flowers, (obviously you need to wait for the first set of flowers) then you should allow it to branch by leaving a sucker I only do this once just for ease of harvest but up to three times is possible. Pinch, snap or cut off all other suckers as  they only weaken the plant.  You can actually plant them if you want.  You could cut back a plant like you're suggesting but you would want to cut it in half so the suckers that then grew would have enough space to grow and then fruit again before being cut back again this would slow down production though.
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So when the flowers appear you cut UNDER the flowers so no  flowers are left?  Then you let it branch and those branches grow .  If I were to cut it before it flowers at a low point would its branches eventually flower too or not?
 
I always prune my tomato plants. I don't have enough support structures for 10' tomato plants and mine go nuts every year. I am frequently cutting back my tomato plants and I also clean them up and remove any branches/leaves that are looking brown. I always have more tomatoes than I know what to do with from each plant.
 
pepperguy1 said:
If you top your tomatoes plants, remember  you can root the cuttings. :cheers:
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I've had terrible luck with cloning.
I tried cloning my Passionfruit vine many times and haven't gotten any roots.  I pulled out 5 inch sucker from my plant and put it in foxfarm soil day before yesterday and its extemely droopy today.  I don't use any lights, I just put things outside in the sun (and dark at night) so that might be the reason.
 
jacqui276 said:
I always prune my tomato plants. I don't have enough support structures for 10' tomato plants and mine go nuts every year. I am frequently cutting back my tomato plants and I also clean them up and remove any branches/leaves that are looking brown. I always have more tomatoes than I know what to do with from each plant.
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tomato paste is by far the best way to reduce the bulk of tomatos into something stable and compact.
 
i have turned a milk crate of toms(admittedly slicing not paste toms) into two gallons of sauce by simply blanching and smashing with a potato smasher... then into this foot mill thing i have to seperate seeds and skins, then simmering it down over night into like 2/3 of a gallon, then bake it at 150 degrees with the oven door open a crack down into like 2 full "quart" sandwich bags.
 
i keep the paste in the freezer. when its frozen its like cold clay... it never freezes solid for what ever reason.
 
Tardis said:
So when the flowers appear you cut UNDER the flowers so no  flowers are left?  Then you let it branch and those branches grow .  If I were to cut it before it flowers at a low point would its branches eventually flower too or not?
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you leave the first set of flowers removing all leaves from there down, this opens up the bottom allowing for more airflow and less chances of soil borne disease. From then on you remove all suckers that you dont want to become a secondary stem, as these divert energy away from the fruit.  As long as a plant can continue to make energy or has enough stored in the root system it will grow back but it takes a long time.  Every time you top a plant it slows growth for awhile so you have to ask yourself "do I want a smaller bushier plant or do i want fruit a month sooner?"  I have personally re-grown a Tomato plant that had no leaves and about 12" of stem left.  It took all season and i only got 2 tomatoes from it, so probably not worth it. 
 
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