Pruning tomato plants?

DH worked in a prison as his first job as a psychologist, and there are also several state prisons in this area. It's a tough environment to work in, and the prisoners are amazingly skilled at being manipulative. That's all they have to do with their time so they are always coming up with methods to get what they want out of the staff. In addition, one often finds that there's very little difference in personality between the inmates and some of the guards. Good luck with your preceptorship!!

Yes the prisoners are very manipulative. This prison has men and women, and the women are the most difficult as far as mind games. The men are more violent but the women are cunning and self-destructive. I would imagine a prison is like a candy store for a psychologist. I would not like to work in one for too long because I would become very cynical, and that's not the way I want to live my life.

About tomatoes - mine are really starting to turn red, even with all this rain and chilly overnight temps.

Tomatoes? Was someone talking about tomatoes?

My Rose de Berne are still producing but fitfully; the St. Pierre is doing better and the Petit Moineau is acting like it never heard of fall. It will go full blast until the first frost, looks like. Someone suggested I try a kelp foliar spray for the leaf issues that seem to attack my plants and cause them to stop bearing earlier than they should. That happens every year, especially the ones that get the overhead water. The ones far enough away from the sprinkler do much better.

Tony got out of that prison job fast; he saw staff psychologists who had fallen prey to the general mindset and were likely to die in harness there - alcohol and drug abuse and all. Either it doesn't attract the best and brightest or it selects against them over time.

Judi -

That's certainly not what I meant at all! I grew up using the term to describe people who were very nimble on their feet and who became proficient at many things, some of which were very different. That definition is pretty narrow . . .

Glad you survived your first day, Judi. Will be interested in hearing your observations as time goes on.

We certainly aren't having any issues with water for the tomatoes this fall . . .

LOL Katie I didn't think that's what you meant!

Good!

It is supposed to be sunny this afternoon - maybe all the tomatoes will soak it up!

Would it help with ripening to start the tomatoes under plastic, a little earlier? Or do they need the extra heat right during the ripening period?

I may eventually build some cold frames big enough for seedlings in the spring, but couldn't set up anything big enough to hold mature plants.

Corey

I am still really trying to play catch up on the forum, but Mom told me that I had to post a picture of my tomato pruning experiment in EWA. Don and I went over at the beginning of October for our birthdays, and harvested all of the fruit that was even showing orange at that time because you never know when the first hard frost will hit on the east side. Our plants get incredibly unruly over there due to a combination of excellent growing conditions and our minimal opportunities to tend to them. I decided to cut back half of the garden at the beginning of October (biggest reason was to make them easier to pick) but leave the other half the way that they were. My question was, does cutting off the leaves and exposing the remaining fruit to the sunlight during the day help ripen them better, or are the plants better off with the leaves to insulate the fruit through the chilly nights? This is what the plants looked like before harvest at the first of October.....

We went back over this last weekend for what will probably be our final tomato harvest. Our analysis was that this late in the season, both sides ripened fairly equally. The pruned side was easier to pick, but there had been a light frost and a couple of the ripe tomatoes on the top of the pruned side had been frost damaged. The unpruned side was more difficult to pick, and while there was no frost damage to the fruit on that side, several of the tomatoes that were close to the ground had been affected by mold. So.... no definitive results.

Along Corey's line of thinking, I have been wondering if plastic over the plants toward the end of the season would make a difference in the final yeild? The way our garden is set up, we watter from the yard side, so could put a fall cold frame over the driveway side of the plants. My concern is that there is more disease towards the end of the season, and restricting air flow then might cause more mold, etc? We plan to keep on working and trying different things as the amount of green fruit even on the east side this year is very depressing.......

We found that covering them with plastic works well to help them ripen if you don't put ends on your short term cold frame and you can water since they won't receive rain. Closing the ends hastens their decline due to disease.