pruning?

Should you prune tomato plants? I am growing them for the first time. They are Roma tomatoes, and they've gotten much taller than the 6' stakes I have them on. Would lopping off the top hurt them? Would it help them produce more fruit? Of 3 plants, 1 is producing lots of fruit, one has only one tomato, and one has nothing.

Hi, ztasusan! Well, Romas are determinate, meaning that most of your mature fruit will occur all at once. I'd be cautious about pruning them if they haven't flowered yet, as you may be severely reducing your harvest.

But 6' Romas???? Yikes! When I last planted this variety (over a decade ago, to tell the truth), mine only got about 3' high and that was at maturity. Are they in full sun, or are they in a partially shaded spot? That would affect the height of the plant....

I can't give you any more insight than that, but there are lots of tomato growers here who can better answer your question than I :)

P.S., I'm guessing from your location you're in the Houston area? I used to spend quite a bit of time there, as the company I worked for had a large employee base there. NEVER a good hair day in Houston, LOL! But welcome to DG!

Curly hair? LOL--yep, in fact, I work in Houston. I gave up and cut my hair short.

Thanks for the tomato information, and in the process answering another question i had, which was what "determinate" means!

The tomatoes are in nearly full sun. There is a tree nearby that provides late afternoon (like 6:30 to dusk) filtering. I think we're going to build some sort of trellis this weekend to support the additional growth. Who knows, maybe I'll keep myself in tomato sauce all winter long!

Some romas are indet.but 6 foot plants with no fruit isn't normal.How much fertilizer are you giving thse monsters?
You may be promoting good leaf growth at the expense of fruit.Cut the food out and see what happens.
You should have plenty of sun,so that dosen't look like the problem.
Keep us posted.

We restaked today and I think they're over 6 feet now...probably 7! Have been fertilizing with all-purpose food every 2 weeks. I'll cut it out and see what happens.

The good news is that we ate two of the little guys tonight and they were SO GOOD! (And I don't even really like to eat tomatoes!