How to pinch out side shoots on tomatoes with clear images showing tomato plant side shoots. (2024)

FAQs

How to pinch out side shoots on tomatoes with clear images showing tomato plant side shoots.? ›

Pro tip – you can use side shoots to create other tomato plants. Let it grow to about 5 or 6 inches, then pinch carefully and place into a pot of wet compost. Keep the compost moist over the coming days and before you know it a root network will be established, and you've got yourself another tomato plant.

Pro tip – you can use side shoots to create other tomato plants. Let it grow to about 5 or 6 inches, then pinch carefully and place into a pot of wet compost. Keep the compost moist over the coming days and before you know it a root network will be established, and you've got yourself another tomato plant.

Tomato Laterals + How to Remove Them

The shoot beneath my finger is a lateral. Laterals are the growths that appear in the crook where the leaf meets the stem. These all need to come off to achieve a single leader. Best done when they're small.

Laterals are the little leaves that appear up the stem of your tomato plant. Pinching off laterals will allow the trusses of fruit to develop better, and promotes better airflow.

Where do you pinch a tomato plant? You pinch out side shoots, which grow between the main vertical stem and the fruit trusses. “What is a truss?”, we hear your ask. Trusses grow out from the main stem, like branches, and are what will carry the fruit.

Early/mid-season

Remove flowers until plants are 12 to 18 inches tall, so plants can direct more energy to the roots. Remove all leafy suckers beneath the first fruit cluster so they won't slow the development of the fruit.

Usually, indeterminate tomatoes grow best with one or two low side shoots; so, remove all side shoots above this. The lower shoots help make the plant more stable and is where they bear fruit.

Four or five will produce large, healthy fruit, but any more than that and the fruit will be small and scant. Choose four or five sturdy trusses to keep, then pinch out any additional side shoots, leaving the plant's top shoot intact, known as the terminal shoot.

Suckers are that extra little vine that starts to grow on vining tomato plants. They emerge from what I like to think of as the elbow of the plant—that junction where a leafy branch meets the main stem (called the axil, if you want to get technical). It's normal for certain types of plants to produce a lot of suckers.

What can I feed my tomatoes to get more fruit? ›

High quality compost—material that is well-decomposed, dark in color, and crumbly—is the best tomato fertilizer to use regardless of the soil you're working with.

If your tomatoes look massive and lush but they aren't fruiting, you may be dealing with a fertility issue. While yellowing leaves and stunted growth can indicate a nitrogen deficiency, an abundance of foliage without any tomatoes is a common sign of nitrogen overdose.

Insufficient Pollination

Your tomatoes might have trouble flowering if they're not pollinating enough. While tomatoes are self-fertile—meaning, the flowers can pollinate themselves—bees can help improve pollination. When a bee nudges a flower, it can dislodge the pollen from the stems.

It can be quite alarming when you cut into a tomato and see little squiggly green or white things amongst the seeds. At first glance, many people assume these are worms. However, usually upon closer inspection, these stringy, squiggly formations will actually turn out to be seeds sprouting inside a tomato fruit.

Increase your tomato crop by pinching out the side shoots

It is really important to pinch out the side shoots of cordon tomatoes as leaving them to grow will seriously reduce your yield. The plant will concentrate on producing a lot of growth instead of concentrating on producing fruit.