Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Tomatoes

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Tomatoes
  • Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:10:31 EDT



> >My parents, who learned their garden ways in the 1930's and 40's,
> pinched out all the "suckers" that sprouted between any other two
> branches of the stem.
>

I quit pruning tomatoes years ago.

My best guess as to how the pruning got started is this: People who have an
interest in something tend to overdo it to the point that they start making
up stuff to do, stuff that is utterly insignificant or even counter
productive.
Goat keepers are the worst although any animal fruit or vegetable falls prey
to this. If you keep sheep, goats, horses, cows, donkeys,. turkeys, ducks,
rabbits, quail, ducks, honeybees, chickens, on a farmstead, you tend to do
whatever works well and no more. Not time or extra attention available for
it.

But if you only keep goats, you tend to see everything as something you ought
to be doing. Rare minerals, specialized feed, remove the horns, trim the
hooves every two weeks, supplement with this or that, prophylacically treat
for
all and sundry rare diseases, agonize over whether to milk from the left
side
or right, act as goat OB when they are kidding, hallucinate over minute or
non-existent differences between breeds etc. etc.

If the homesteader is also tending eight or ten other animal species, they
tend to do just what works and go on. Oddly their goats do fine with a
minimum
of attention.

I think that same sort of thing crept in because many people grow gardens for
tomatoes only, or tomatoes and very few other things. And rightly so. But
then they plant those tomatoes and during hte weeks and weeks that they just
watch them grow, they think to themselves, I ought to be doing something.

There might have been real reasons for pruning tomatoes under some
circumstances and under some methods of cultivation, but I suspect it got
proliferated
as something you 'ought' to do without much more thought or experimentation.

The only "pruning" I do is that the suckers that grow at the joint of an
indeterminate tomato can be snapped off and planted and they will grow
another
tomato plant. I use this as a hedge against blight. The parent plant is far
more prone to blight with the new rootlings rarely getting it. Those cool
wet
spells might take out the older plant but the rootlings survive to make
tomatoes
in the fall.

James </HTML>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page