Pruning tomatoes: look for the “Y”

Hey there, SuperKasey!  How the hell is life?  It’s nice to hear from you about your strawberries, but we’re missing you!  I’m missing you, I mean.  I know life gets busy, but…Come back, Shane, come back!

Now to tomatoes.

Tomatoes are very important to me.  I use them in sauces and dishes all the time.  I’ve considered getting a dehydrator to make sun-dried tomatoes, too.  I love them in salads, pastas or as a solo snack.

I have two varieties of tomatoes in my garden.  I have one beefeater and one mortgage lifter.  Both are heirloom tomato plants, which means that they come from a long line of successful plants, like a produce dynasty or something.

My sister and brother-in-law visited this past weekend, and they had some advice for maintaining and pruning tomatoes.  They are both wildlife biologists and have a very large garden in their back yard in Kentucky.  Their soil is mostly clay, but they grow LOTS and do a lot of canning and jarring and all that stuff that seems like far too much work to me.

I’ve officially reached the world of mundane tasks

Good morning, SuperKasey.  I hope you and Chicago are enduring this chilly weather.  Any frost up there?  We almost had a (light) snap frost last weekend.  I moved my remaining seedlings indoors.  Speaking of which, I have two little containers of seedlings for my beans and my arugula.  I just leave them out in the garden most of the time, which maybe defeats the purpose, but they are in their own specially fertilized little containers, so I’ll plant them once they are grown.  Here’s a bit of everything:

You are absolutely right.  Now that everything is planted, sprouted, grown and, in some cases, thinned, flowering and budding, I’ve surpassed the stage of OMIGODTHINGSAREGROWING and now I’m onto OMIGODTHEWEEDSAREVERYWHERE.

Still.  Baby weeds compared to your monsters.