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Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/Robert Dolezal

Tomato plants require frequent pinching and pruning to train their growth up a trellis. (Remember to always leave some shoots bearing buds and flowers.)

Most plants grow to predetermined shapes depending on their habit, which may be low and spreading, mounding, branching, or tall and upright. Genetically controlled, these forms may be influenced by the conditions and events that most plants endure during growth, including wind and rainstorms, breakage, insect infestation and animal browsing.

While you can’t control the weather and stop every creature from entering your garden, you can help direct your vegetable plants’ growth by altering the size and quantity of the fruit that they produce. You may also wish to keep a plant’s size to suit a certain area of your garden or train it to grow vertically up a trellis, stake or other support.

There are two primary methods to controlling the growth of your vegetables: pinching and pruning. Pinching is used frequently as plants grow to remove growth buds, flowers or immature fruit. Pruning is a corrective action necessary to remove entire branches or prevent the spread of the plant outside its growing area.

Active growth normally takes place at the buds found at the ends of branches and vines or on top of tall, upright plants. Chemical messengers within the plant signal that this bud, the so-called dominant bud, is the place where growth should be sustained. Intermediate buds, which occur all along the branch or stem, remain dormant as long as this dominant bud is actively growing (a process called “apical dominance”). If the terminal bud is damaged or removed, the bud nearest the end of the stem will become dominant and start to actively grow.

Remember that your vegetable plants are very adaptable. As the quantity of fruit they bear is reduced, they compensate by making each fruit larger. When they grow excess foliage, they compensate by reducing the number of flowers and fruit that they set. You can increase the yield from your plants by pinching off flowers and removing some leaves. Each of the remaining blossoms that set fruit will be larger than they would be had the competing flowers and foliage remained on the plant.

On vining plants like cucumber and squash, entire branching stems can be removed, leaving a single runner to train vertically on a trellis. By doing this, you’ll reduce the plant’s footprint from more than 20 square feet to as little as 1 square foot.