Prune out tomatoes to encourage ripening

Once you’ve got several trusses growing on your tomato plants, you can pinch out the growing tips and prune out some leaves to encourage ripening. This isn’t 100% necessary, but if you’re finding the tomatoes reluctant to turn from green to red (or yellow!) then they may need a little helping hand, especially if it’s a little later on in the month.

First off, pinch out the growing tip to prevent the plant from putting out new leaves at the top of the plant, and pinch out any new sideshoots that appear at a 45 degree angle growing between the main stem and leaves. With those removed, use secateurs to cut off leaves at the stem – you can happily remove 60-70% of the foliage and the plant will be fine.

Pop all the foliage on the compost pile, and then just keep watering and feeding your tomatoes regularly and keep them as warm as possible so that they can start ripening.