Els Engel

Pruning tomatoes

Light and air

My father has years and years of experience growing tomatoes. The first thing I learned from him was pruning. 'The most important thing', according to him.

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Pruned tomato leaves - to give the cherry tomatoes light and air Els Engel

So today I took up the scissors and attacked our little cherry tomato plants. It looked like a jungle in the grow bed and in the back of my head my father's words rang: 'Light and air they need. They shouldn't touch each other. There has to be room for a breeze between the plants.'

'As soon as you see a little spot on a leave, it has to go. Tomatoes can fade away in just a few hours', he warned me.

I ended up with an entire pile of leaves, it shocked me at first to see how much I had pruned away, but when a visitor gaped at the growbed, saying 'it's beautiful!', I was happy I did it.

We'll see how the tomatoes like their new leave-cut.

For those of you who don't have a father whispering hints about tomatoes in your ear, there's a nice WikiHow about pruning tomatoes: http://www.wikihow.com/Prune-Tomatoes