Pruning Tomatoes That Have Grown Up Into the Lights
When tomatoes are grown outdoors, there is usually no need to prune them, and so it may be an unfamiliar process to many gardeners. Tomatoes grown in the AeroGarden, however, must be pruned regularly to keep them small and compact. It may be helpful to think of “bonsai”, the Japanese art of pruning to shape plants into robust miniatures.
It is entirely possible to reclaim tall, leggy tomatoes, but they will take a bit longer to produce fruit than if pruned enough when small.
Removing the Lamp Hood
To begin, unplug your AeroGarden, and then turn it around so that you can access the back of it. Remove the Lamp Hood by first unplugging its lamp cord, and then pushing forward on the little locking tab while lifting the Lamp Hood off the Lamp Arm. (Pencils are pointing to the locking lever and lamp cord in the photo below). Removing the hood makes it easy and safe to access your tomato plants without accidentally touching the hot Grow Bulbs.
Locking Lever
Lamp Cord
To encourage your tomatoes to sprout new growth lower down on their stems, you will need to prune off about the top third of the leaves and flowers, if any are present. It may seem counter-intuitive to prune off flowers or even tomatoes, but doing this forces the plant to branch out lower down on the stem, where it will later be able to produce many more flowers and fruit.
Here are before-and-after pictures of an overgrown Cherry Tomato Seed Kit. In the first photo you see the overgrown plant before being cleaned up and pruned. In the second photo, the right rear plant has been removed (it was dead), and the other two plants have:
- Been tied upright to take better advantage of the light
- Had about a third of their uppermost leaves pruned off, and
- Had all dead and browning leaves removed.
As your tomatoes begin to send new shoots out at the top, prune them off again. When pruning the tops, look for the newest, smallest leaves, and make sure you remove these. The growing tip is not the actual highest part of the plant, but just a little below that, in the V where one stem branches off from another.
The next photo shows the growing tip (in the V), with the pencil pointing to where the plant should be pruned.
Keep pruning the new growth off the top about every two weeks, making sure to remove the growing tip. After the plant determines that growing upward is not an option, it will send out new branches lower down on the stem. Keeping the tops pruned down also allows more light to reach the new leaves that will form at the base. Keep training it this way until the plant has developed a more compact shape, and it will then begin to flower throughout its height.
Here are two photos of the middle plant that was pruned above. The first was taken one week after pruning the top, and the second photo was taken three weeks after the pruning. Note how much new growth there is at the base of the plant.
Below is a photo of the same tomato plants shown in all the photos above, five weeks after being pruned and moved into a Pro 200 (tall) AeroGarden:
Below is the same AeroGarden, 14 weeks after the meristems were pruned (at approximately 30 weeks of age). It yielded 163 tomatoes off the two plants. These are our regular Golden Harvest Cherry Tomatoes (not the Mega Cherry):
To understand more about pruning and the botany of how it works, please read the article Pruning for the Technically-Inclined.
After you’ve finished pruning your tomatoes, reinstall the Lamp Hood, plug the hood back in, and then plug the AeroGarden back in.
If you need further assistance, or if you have any other questions about your AeroGarden or Seed Kits, there are more articles available on this web site. You may also call AeroGrow Customer Service at 1-800-476-9669, and one of our agents will be happy to assist you.
Happy AeroGardening!
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 08 January 2009 01:06 )
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