Do you prune your tomato plants?

We only started our garden this year, but we didn't really prune any of the plants (other than to remove branches that were showing issues). Our cherry tomato varieties have gone crazy. We've had a little trouble with the larger varieties. But we don't really know what we're doing so anything we get is a success of some sort.

We even have three volunteers of one of the cherry varieties growing amidst our bushes in the front yard. I'm guessing a squirrel or rabbit decided to help us plant there. We don't maintain those at all, we don't even water them. We just pick when we see them ready.

We're thinking we may prune next year to control the direction of the growth, but not sure yet.

my mother sent me a copy of an article from a scholarly agricultural Journal wherein they took 6-8 common varieties of indeterminate tomatoes and tried several pruning patterns, hoping for best combination of total production in weight and number of tomatoes.

They found that these qualities are best maximized by pinching suckers to keep the total number of growth points at 2, including the highest/original growth point, and the sucker that grows up from the leaf immediately under the 1st set of flowers.

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I tried broccoli for the first time this year. It seems impossible to get it to grow in clumps.

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Broccoli is one of my favorite fall/winter things to put in the garden. I've never trimmed any of my broccoli plants and what happens for me is they grow a nice sized central head that is usually as big as a cabbage ball to damn near soccer ball size. I cut that out to eat and then let the plant produce "side shoots" of smaller size broccoli, usually about the size of a silver dollar round.

As you cut those out to use, it starts producing more, but smaller side shoots and I can harvest about 6 weeks of broccoli off each plant.

I planted corn one time and will never do it again. At best, you will get 2 ears per plant. They are easily blown over if you experience high winds or even real heavy rainfall. I can buy ears of corn so cheap when in season it doesn't warrant planting and taking up garden space.

If you want a plant that is real productive, easy to grow and doesn't need much in the way of watering or maintenance, give okra a try-------if you like okra. Mine will get up to 8 ft. tall and when in full production, I'll pick at least one pod per day, per plant and I usually plant about 60-75 plants.

Yeah, I love okra.

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suckers

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always wondered if this was a real thing or some wives tale.

the branches that grow out of the intersection of a branch and the stem?