Tomatoes are the most popular vegetable grown in American gardens, according to the National Gardening Association. After all, there's nothing better than biting into one fresh off the vine. And homegrown tastes so much better than ones from the grocery store.
Unfortunately, pruning tomatoes can be harder than it looks at first glance. It's easy to cut off the top of the plant instead of pruning the suckers. However, Instagrammer Jill Ragan (@whisperingwillowfrm) says, "Not all is lost" if you make this topping mistake.
The scoop
Fresh Food Connect explains that you want to remove the suckers — the small shoots that start to grow where the leaves meet the plant's stem — when pruning a tomato plant. Fresh Food Connect also tells us that different gardeners have different philosophies on this, but most remove at least some of these.
It's easy, though, to accidentally remove the main stem instead of a sucker, especially when your plant is small. When this happens, some gardeners will pull the plant out, assuming it's too damaged to continue growing.
However, Ragan says that's not the case. If you keep tending to the plant, one of the suckers can take over and become the main stem. Then, the plant can still produce flowers and fruit. It might be smaller than your other tomato plants for a while, but you don't need to dig it up.
How it's working
Growing your own food not only helps improve your diet, but it can also have huge benefits when it comes to lowering your stress and improving your overall mental health.
That's not to mention how it lowers the demand for produce shipped across the world to get to your local grocery store. If we all grew fruits and veggies, this kind of transportation wouldn't be necessary.
Having to pull up plants can be discouraging and frustrating, though, especially if you haven't done much gardening before. Ragan's encouragement may help some gardeners stick with it, even after lopping off the wrong part of their plant!
Keeping the plants in the ground also means the water and effort put into them wasn't wasted since they can still produce fruit.
What people are saying
Other Instagrammers loved Ragan's post.
One said, "Perfect, because yesterday I beheaded mine by accident."
Another shared, "Great information - my goats bit off the tops, so I am going to try this!"
Someone else added, "I love that about tomatoes, they are so resilient."
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