My mom was a good gardener and grew great tomatoes. Somehow or another, though, we had a neighbor to the west who consistently got them a week earlier.

She could explain away any early success of her sister a county south. But not someone just down the road. We just knew Shelia had earlier tomatoes.

Tomatoes are a piece of endless discussion for gardeners.

How early did you have them? How many did you get? How’d they taste this year? Did they stay healthy?

Surrounding the plant comes a sort of folklore about the process. Each experienced gardener has their special sort of magic they practice with the plant.

People put all kinds of odd stuff in the holes they plant them in.

Oyster shells, fish heads, pennies. Heck, I did Tums to fight off blossom rot. People are picky about times. Some plant them early as possible to try for the fabled pre-Fourth of July tomato; some hold back, reasoning it keeps their plants healthier.

People try various methods to make sure plenty of tomatoes set. I plant basil plants in between, as basil helps attract pollinators to tomato blossoms.

I also flick my flower stems to pollinate. I’ve even read about using an electric toothbrush.

Of all the tomato tricks and debate, though, none is as gardener specific as pruning.

To prune or not to prune. That is the question with tomatoes.

I reached out to the community with a survey and asked this question during the week.

The responses were varied and nuanced.

No one who responded said they completely removed all suckers from the plants. Fourteen percent said they do not prune, and 28 percent noted that it either depended on the variety or the type of plant (determinate or indeterminate).

Determinate are the kind that grow in a bush and produce all their tomatoes in two to three weeks. For those, most did not recommend pruning. Indeterminate are the common kind you see in a lot of gardens just vining all over the place, which people did prune.

Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they pruned some.

I tend to think a response from Kurt Lawrence probably serves as a good summation of a lot of the feedback I got from the partial prune crowd.

“ Your plant will quickly produce multiple vines radiating from the main plant.Once you’ve decided how many vines you’ll have room for, from then on you will, on a regular basis, pinch all new shoots except for the main lateral shoot.

I prune in this way but try to get my plant pretty high off the ground before I let it start putting off other vines. I like a solid stock and the plant less dense on the bottom to avoid disease.

Survey reasons for pruning were widespread, but the two most common reasons were to direct more energy to fruit and to avoid soil disease—blight is the bane of tomato existence in Kansas.

Another response that I loved read like this:

“ At the most basic level, I prune because my parents pruned. I love the ritual of pruning.”

I think of all the little practices I do and learned from my parents in the garden. It’s a wonderful piece of connection and also I think a connection to what it means to be human. For thousands of years, the most common way to pass knowledge came from one generation teaching the next. That persists in gardening.

It’s why some still plant around the moon or religious holidays or specific dates. It’s in part how tomato planting practices gained a wide variety and that special magic I earlier described.

Back to pruning, there are people who argue against the practice, saying it decreases the number of fruit produced and impacts the tomatoes’ flavor.

I do wonder this every time I snap off a shoot, and I do sometimes feel a little bad. So did one other respondent to my survey, writing a piece of almost poetry about their plant. I kick myself a little bit for not asking respondents to include their name on feedback, because I’d like to meet this person.

I will sign off with their response.

“ I should prune, it’s a fact. But all too often I lack the courage and the heart to do so,” they write. “Oh, beautiful one, this will hurt me more than it hurts you. I hold the shears close only to shake. Fear, sadness, regret. Grief.”