WARNING: Pruning This Tomato Plant Will Ruin Your Harvest!

What's growing on, gardeners? On today's 2-Minute Garden Tip, I'm going to share with you the pruning mistake that will ruin your harvest and guarantee you get no fruit. There are three types of tomatoes. Indeterminate tomatoes are what most gardeners grow. They grow indeterminately until the vines are killed off by frost, disease, or pests. They ripen their fruits slowly, a few at a time, because they are always putting about half of their energy into the process of growing more leaves, stems, and vines. These plants can grow 6-10 feet tall by the end of the season, given enough time. Determinate tomatoes grow wide like a bush, to a predetermined height, usually about 3-5 feet tall. They flower earlier and more profusely because these plants grow with less vigor. Once they stop growing, they dedicate all of their energy into ripening their fruits, so determinate tomatoes ripen their crop a lot faster than indeterminate tomatoes. Then there are semi-determinate tomatoes, which are kind of in between. They have a more compact growth habit, where they start off life growing like a vine, but they produce more side shoots than indeterminate tomatoes, so they get kind of bushy, and their main stem usually does top out and stops growing given enough time. They often grow to about 4-6 feet in height, but some more vigorous varieties can grow a little more if your season is long enough. The problem comes if you don't recognize which type of tomato that you're growing. While I generally avoid pruning all of my tomatoes almost entirely, regardless of type, pruning tomatoes has become a fad, and all of the pruning tutorials out there are geared towards only pruning indeterminate tomatoes. Because indeterminate tomatoes grow indefinitely as a vine, you can remove suckers, and they will still continue to flower and fruit along the main stem, so you can still get a decent harvest. This is not the case with determinate and semi-determinate tomato varieties. These varieties bush out instead of grow as a vine. So if you remove suckers on these determinate style tomatoes, you are removing the very part of the plant that produces the flowers, and you will not get fruit. It is critical that you never remove suckers from these determinate tomatoes. Doing so will ruin your harvest, and there is little reason to do so anyway because these plants are already small and easily controlled, and they usually ripen their crop faster than disease sets in. So please, verify the type of tomato you are growing before you do any pruning. The seed packet will tell you which type of tomato you're growing. If you bought your plants from a nursery and you don't know, just google the variety name and then cross-reference it on a seed exchange that's selling the seeds. All of the seed selling websites tell you whether your plant is a determinate, indeterminate, or semi-determinate. If you want more details on why I don't prune my tomatoes anymore at all regardless of type, I'll link to a video both above and down in the video description so you can see the details. And that's today's 2-Minute Garden Tip. If you're new to the channel, please consider subscribing and hitting the bell to receive new video notifications. And check out our Amazon storefront and spreadshop in the video description for a list of the gardening products I use and awesome custom-designed apparel and other gear. Your support is greatly appreciated.