Pruning Tomato Plants, Plant Litter, and Green Manure

As your container tomato plants grow, some of the lower leaves most likely will begin to die off.  Prune those... snip off the whole leaf branch near the main plant stalk.  All those dying leaves do is sap resources from the plant.  Keep the removed portions on the soil surface in your container.  Such material will dry up and serve as plant litter...commonly called "mulch".  Mulch helps retain water in the soil.  If you have the time, cut up the removed leaves into smaller pieces and spread those around on the soil surface.  That takes only a minute or so.

Another option is to push the fresh litter under the soil surface...just a bit, and not near the main stalk...to serve as green manure.  Don't bury this material too deeply or near the stalk because when it rots that may affect the plant (including the roots) in a negative way.  Eventually, as humus forms due to friendly bacteria digesting the fresh litter, nutrients will leach down to the roots when you water.  I prefer to leave the litter on top of the soil to dry.  That really helps maintain soil moisture.

We also need to prune tomato plant "suckers", or "sucker branches".  Those are smallish shoots that grow where a branch of leaves meets the main stalk of the entire plant...right in the bottom of that "V" area.  Suckers make your plants much bushier, thus drawing resources/nutrients away from "fruit" formation.  [In Botany, the organ containing plant seeds (or that IS the seed) is usually referred to as a "fruit"...even if it's a vegetable or a nut.:]

Happy Trails, and Be Well