This article was co-authored by Andrew Carberry, MPH. Andrew Carberry has been working in food systems since 2008. He has a Masters in Public Health Nutrition and Public Health Planning and Administration from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. This article has been viewed 1,777,558 times.

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You only need to worry about pruning your tomato plant if it’s an indeterminate variety, meaning it continues to grow and produce fruit until it’s killed by frost. If your tomato plant is a determinate variety, meaning it has a shorter, predetermined lifecycle, there’s no need to prune it. If you’re growing an indeterminate variety, remove any flowers from the plant until it’s between 12 and 18 inches (30 and 45 cm) tall, which will send more energy to the roots. You should also pinch off any suckers that grow beneath the first flower cluster on the plant. Suckers are small shoots that grow where the leaf stems meet the main stem on the plant. Removing the suckers will direct more energy to the fruit. If the suckers are too thick to pinch off, use clean pruning shears to snip them off instead. Avoid pruning suckers above the first flower cluster since they will eventually flower and produce fruit. To learn other ways you can tell if your tomato plants are ready to be pruned, keep reading!