Tomato Pruning Experiment, Week Five

Week five of me answer the question: do pruned tomato plants produce more than their un-pruned sisters?

The  Oregon Spring tomatoes produced NINE pints  this week!  I also got nearly a pound of Sun Golds, a type of salad tomato.  My neighbors are about to benefit from those salad tomatoes :)


To recap, I have 2 Sungolds, 4 Oregon Springs, and 4 Grandma Mary's Paste tomato plants growing in my garden this year.  I pruned 1 Sungold, 1 Oregon Spring, and 1 Grandma Mary and let the rest go wild.  I'm also growing Legends and Green Zebras, but I left them out of the experiment this time around.

The Grandma Mary's are still doing nothing.  I have high hopes that they're waiting to wow me.

The Sungolds have to be harvested twice a week at this rate!  Sorry the pictures are split up, but that was the only way to keep ahead of the game.

Pruned Sungolds:

Un-Pruned Sungolds:

Pruned Oregon Spring:
The pruned Oregon Spring tomato has finally started producing tomatoes.  It's first week produced 15 ounces more tomatoes than its three other brothers their first week combined.  Better late than never :)

As you can see, I was too excited to take a picture before I started harvesting!

Un-Pruned Oregon Springs:

Total harvest from Pruned Sungold: 8.75 ounces
Total harvest from Unpruned Sungold: 11.4 ounces
Total harvest from Pruned Oregon Spring: 47.30 ounces
Total harvest from Unpruned Oregon Spring: 163.05 ounces (32.61 ounces per plant)
Total harvest from Pruned Grandma Mary's Paste Tomatoes: 0 ounces
Total harvest from Unpruned Grandma Mary's Paste Tomatoes: 0 ounces

What to do with all of these tomatoes?  Well, make Frankie's famous marinara sauce, of course!

Keep watching the blog, I'll continue to post the harvest tallies each week.

Tomato Pruning Experiment, Week Three

Week three of me answer the question: do pruned tomato plants produce more?

A bit more excitement this week!  I had about 4 pints of Oregon Spring tomatoes from the garden this week!  I also got 3 ounces of Sun Golds, which isn't alot but since they're salad tomatoes I will take it :)


To recap, I have 2 Sungolds, 4 Oregon Springs, and 4 Grandma Mary's Paste tomato plants growing in my garden this year.  I pruned 1 Sungold, 1 Oregon Spring, and 1 Grandma Mary and let the rest go wild.  I'm also growing Legends and Green Zebras, but I left them out of the experiment this time around.


The Pruned Sungold plant (and babies!!):

Four tomatoes with a total weight of 1.3 ounces

Un-Pruned Sungold tomoato (and babies!):

So far, the pruned plant is producing more, but not by much.  This article from Fine Gardening does mention that indeterminate tomatoes like Sungolds do well from pruning.  How well?  Who can say, for now the difference is hardly an ounce.

Grandma Mary's:
No difference between last week and this. ho-hum...

Oregon Spring, unpruned:

Harvest from the Oregon Spring, unpruned.

And the unpruned Oregon Spring:

  

It appears we're missing some tomato-y goodness....

As you can see, a BIG DIFFERENCE in the Oregon Spring Tomatoes.  Apparently, pruning the plant did harm to it; as of today, I've harvested zero ounces from the pruned plant but 32 OUNCES from the unpruned plants.  That's an average of eight ounces per plant!

Total harvest from Pruned Sungold: 1.3 ounces

Total harvest from Unpruned Sungold: .75 ounces

Total harvest from Pruned Oregon Spring: 0 ounces

Total harvest from Unpruned Oregon Spring: 32.85 ounces

Total harvest from Pruned Grandma Mary's Paste Tomatoes: 0 ounces

Total harvest from Unpruned Grandma Mary's Paste Tomatoes: 0 ounces 

Keep watching the blog, I'll continue to post the harvest tallies each week!