Quote:
Originally Posted by AKmark
You are not understanding the single stem pruning.
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Nope. I understand it fine.
It's great for areas with short growing seasons or 2 short growing seasons. It also works for commercial settings, greenhouses, etc.
And it's great for showing off the tomatoes that *have* set.
Studies show that pruning produces more marketable yield, i.e., large, regular-looking fruit. But unpruned plants produce more overall yield *per hectare*, i.e., if you don't care about all kinds of different sizes and other irregularities that affect only aesthetics, you get more total tomato mass from unpruned plants per hectare.
And then there's the issue of flavor, which is even harder to find firm answers on, although general research shows a direct correlation between amount of foliage and better tomato flavor.
As with many gardening strategies that have been hotly debated for centuries, It Depends On Your Goals And Preferences.
Unfortunately, you can only see what the foliage lets you see, but this is one plant, and there were many more clusters of fruit on it in the rear and interior of the plant, and this is at <5 feet. I don't see a large difference in potential fruit in multiple plants pruned to one stem, and I certainly see more fruit happening late in the season on an entire plant vs. three that have been single-stem pruned and require a complicated support system. More fruit for less effort? That's my priority. Whether they're all big and pretty doesn't matter that much
to me. Of course, as with everything tomato, some varieties may, indeed, produce more per area when pruned.
