See that sucker there? Suckers are secondary branches that grow in the joints of existing branches. Pinch ‘em off. Suckers take energy away from growing tomatoes. No tomatoes will form on sucker branches.
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These are books that I really enjoyed reading (and refer back to regularly). They'll be a great help to you on your container gardening adventures:
Garden Up! by Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet
Succulent Container Gardens by Debra Lee Baldwin
Sugar Snaps & Strawberries by Andrea Bellamy
Bountiful Container by McGee & Stuckey
Small Budget Gardener by Maureen Gilmer
Southern California Organic Gardening by Pat Welsh
Container Gardening for California
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
How do you tell which are suckers and which are tomato bearing branches? The picture and article are not very specific on identifying them.
Hi Roger, can you see the arrow? That’s pointing to a sucker. They always grow in the joint of the main stem and an existing branch.
Awesome! Thanks- i will go prune this afternoon!
Not true – suckers will grow tomatoes if left alone. I pinch them off too (it makes for a less tangled mess of a plant) unless I don’t notice them in time and they already have fruit growing. Then they get to live – I just can’t bring myself to take off a branch with fruit on it.
Interesting. In 2010 I was too lazy to remove suckers and I didn’t get any fruit on them? Ever since I’ve been a committed pincher.
Regardless if the suckers produce fruit if left alone ‘long’ enough it’s better to be a pincher and get quality fruit a little faster. Love those containers in the last post!
I’ve gotten fruit on suckers as well. However if you pinch them, you can root them and it’s an easy way to get plants for a second planting.
Melissa, this is glorious news. Do you have any secrets to rooting? 1-rooting powder as seen on public tv gardening shows: necessity or marketing ploy? 2-soil – loamy rich soil that drains well (that seems required by everything else that grows but herbs), sandy soil? please describe.
I’ve only attempted rooting twice. The first had to do with an avocado pit, toothpicks and a jar (I believe I had yet to be visited by the tooth fairy). The second root fest had to do with a spider plant in a dorm room, the details of which I don’t recall and no, I wasn’t high – the older I get, the more I want to be – I don’t make moral judgment about any herb created by our creator – I reserve my moral judgment for fossil fuels, bombs, corporate greed, lies, children who live in fear and poverty.
Thanks to you and anyone else with advice for me.
r
PS. If your answer begins with 1-eat an avocado, you’ll have made my day.
My parents have a big garden with hundreds of tomatoes and they always prune them for the same reason you mentioned. I have 4 now and I almost always leave some because I cannot always find them in time and then it’s too late. And at least last year (now it’s too early to tell), the suckers gave me tomatoes too.
But it is really hard to see which are which
WOW! thanks I did not know this!
Suckers will get fruit on them, but it’s much easier and healthier for the suckers to be removed. Getting air all around the plant will prevent some of the tomato diseases from getting started. They can also be rooted and a new tomato plant started. Just put in water for about a week to 10 days and then plant in a starter pot. Within a month they can go out in the garden.
I agree with Jennie, I have had some really nice fruit come from suckers. I heard that the only downfall to allowing your suckers to grow is that the overall size of the fruit be smaller because it has to provide more nutrients to places.
Yep the suckers are juvenile plants. When I grow a plant that is much Superior in quality and taste. I use the suckers as clones and regrow them. They will have the same traits as the parent plant.
Regards, Barry.
I reroot my suckers into wet soil. As long as it’s in the shade, the sucker will create roots of it’s on and become another plant. I use this method to give away to friends. And if you have a tight budget, then it’s easy way to get multiple plants if you purchase or have just one. If the suckers are left there then they’ll form what looks like a split and create a larger plant. This isn’t ideal in pots.
Another gardener told me that you can also cut your determinate tomatoes between the first 2 sets of leaves that form to create another plant. But I’ve been too chicken to try that in my garden.
They are the ‘armpit hairs’ of the tomato world!
I couldn’t have said it better myself…unless I’d thought of it first! HA! ps. that came out wrong – you said that just fine!
Hi Fern, I have a general tomato question please. I have transplanted my tomato seedlings in larger pots, but now that they’ve grown, I think they are a bit too crowded. Can I transplant them again, maybe each in a pot?
Or is it too late to transplant them again? Thank you
Regards, Nermine
Tomatoes definitely need to be in their own, large pots. Since it is pretty early in the season, I think you should be able to transplant the tomatoes again and still do just fine.
In the fall, you can snip the end 2/3rd of sucker branches, root them, and keep them indoors for winter tomatoes. Use the branches from a top quality plant, and you will have the same tomatoes. Then you can use suckers off of these to produce your plants the following spring as well. I use heirloom tomatoes, but have done this many times in place of saving seeds. Just be sure to use plenty of natural sunlight as well as lamps and plenty of compost and fertizer so you will have the garden fresh tomato flavor, and not the hard, tasteless hot house tomato flavor. Shut the lights off at night to stimulate the regular growth seaosn in a garden, and stress them a little between each watering…these help the flavor for indoor tomatoes.
sweet 100 and celebrity are hybrids-but they are no match for septoria.
Removing suckers is such a great way to make the plant is sending the necessary nutrients to the branches that will eventually produce the fruit. Even if you spend just a minute or two every other day, you can keep your tomato plants, “sucker” free.
This is an answer for my under size tomato problem. Perfect!!!!
This is incorrect information. Suckers fruit all the time, and it’s OK to grow two or three on indeterminate tomatoes, but pinch the rest so the main stem can produce larger fruit. All suckers should be allowed to grow on determinate tomatoes as it’ll make no difference if they’re removed or not.
I know this is an old post, but I had to drop in and thank you for the tip. I’m new to gardening (I live in Florida, so right now I’m working on kale) and already looking forward to my first tomato plants in the spring.
Ive always wondered about suckers.
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Folks, the suckers on indeterminate (grow-until-frost) plants have time to make tomatoes. The suckers on determinate (grow to a certain point, make fruit, and die) plants are just parasites. That’s the difference, or so the horticulture books say.
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