Nothing says summer quite like fresh tomatoes. However, because of Rural Studio Farm’s greenhouse, our tomatoes are already setting fruit in early April from tomatoes that students started at the end of January.

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But growing tomatoes in a greenhouse is a little different than in the field. For one thing, there is less space for such sprawling, vining plants to grow. So in the greenhouse, students take advantage of vertical growth by supporting the growing tomatoes with strings dropped from a support line. Then students pruned the plants down to a single growing stem.

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Tomato plants produce suckers at the nodes between stem and branch (coming off at about a 45-degree angle) that will eventually grow into separate stems, each producing its own branches and fruit, and students prune these off, sometimes daily once growth takes off. Such pruning produces fewer tomatoes overall, but these tomatoes are larger and more plants can be packed closer together, producing a higher total yield. Students also removed all branches below the first fruit cluster to open up air movement around the disease-prone plants, especially since airflow is limited in the greenhouse.

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Since our farm manager Eric is working solo right now, he also started some smaller determinate tomatoes, which max out at five feet tall, in an effort to try and minimize such high-need practices, since determinate tomatoes require less support and only very minimal sucker pruning (only below the first flower cluster) or else yields are reduced.

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