I have two tomato plants. I heard that pinching off the tops makes bigger and more fruit.?

I know about pruing the side shoots and suckers, but what about the stuff that is right on top?

I have two tomato plants. I heard that pinching off the tops makes bigger and more fruit.?
The "stuff on top" IS the "leader." If you pinch it off, you will force the plant to sprout branches at the nodes. These are called suckers. If you pinch off the suckers, and you have no leader, you will not have enough foliage to enable the photosynthesis to make the sugar for the production of fruit. Read what I wrote below and then watch the video at the link given.





Most plants have what is called in gardener's jargon, "a leader." The leader is the growing tip of the plant. If you pinch off the leader, the tomato plant will be forced to generate new 'growing leaders.' It does this in several places below the place where the old 'leader' was--with the result that the plant branches out.


With tomatoes, common practice is to pinch off the SUCKERS. Suckers are branches off of the main leader of the plant that occur naturally. Each sucker will then have its own 'leader.' The more leaders you have, the more energy goes to growing the green, leafy plant, instead of into producing fruit. If you don't pinch off the SUCKERS, you will have much smaller tomatoes.





Here's a GREAT, short, online video about pruning suckers from tomato plants: http://www.gardengal.tv/video/article.ph...


Here is a text transcript of the video, in case you can't get video: http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/pag...





My personal gardening experience aligns with this information.
Reply:Depends,





If your in the southern tier states It can help, In the Northern tier states the plant cant recover before frost
Reply:Take the tops off when the plan has reached the desired height; if you do it too soon you will end up with a short plant and less fruit.
Reply:Since you have two plants, why not try an experiment? Pinch the tops off of one and not the other and see what happens.