Germinating Seeds

Harvesting Herbs For Growth

Elderberries vs Pokeweed

Perennial Vegetables

Psych Med Injury

Tomato Pruning

You pruned the suckers off your Roma and wondered why it produced less fruit. You didn’t prune your Brandywine and it became a tangled mess that rotted from the inside.
Same plant family. Opposite pruning rules. The tag on the transplant tells you which.
The two types that matter most:
Determinate tomatoes (Roma, Celebrity, Rutgers) grow to a set height, produce most of their fruit in a concentrated window, and stop. Every sucker on a determinate becomes a fruit-bearing branch. Removing suckers removes fruit. Don’t prune them — just take off the lowest leaves where they touch the soil to reduce splash-borne fungal contact. Cage them. Let them bush out.
Indeterminate tomatoes (Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Sungold, most cherry types) grow and produce continuously until frost. Left unpruned, each sucker becomes a full secondary stem that produces its own suckers — and the interior becomes dense, shaded, and damp. Prune the suckers. Train to one or two main stems on a tall stake or string. Pinch new suckers when they’re small. Check twice a week in warm weather — they appear fast.
The quick guide:
– Determinate (bush) — don’t remove suckers. Remove only the lowest leaves. Cage it. Harvest comes in a concentrated flush — good for canning and preserving
– Indeterminate (vining) — remove suckers regularly. Stake or string trellis. One or two leaders. Harvest is continuous small batches through the season — good for fresh eating
– Semi-determinate (Better Bush, Mountain Magic) — remove suckers below the first flower cluster, leave everything above. Short stake or sturdy cage
– Dwarf (Tiny Tim, Micro Tom) — minimal pruning. Remove lower leaves for airflow. Small stake if it leans. Container-friendly
The Roma you pruned like a Brandywine lost fruit it was never going to replace. The Brandywine you didn’t prune needed the airflow you never gave it.
Read the tag. Match the type.
My Cousin Vinny

Official Release Notice of ‘Cultivating Life: Growing Food Sustainably’
OK, drum roll please! I finally felt I had enough good material in a logical and useful sequence to release version 1 of ’Cultivating Life: Growing Food Sustainably’
The whole sits at over 1,800 pages so is reasonably comprehensive. The first section of it, about 80 pages, is on preparedness planning and actions to take in a SHTF situation. It is so important I hold the view that everyone should own it and that money should not be a barrier to doing so. So I am releasing it for $1. That’s right, a single solitary dollar.
And not just for you. For you, your family, friends, co-workers, neighbours, in fact, anyone with whom you wish to share the link.
Why? Because in a worst case scenario, the more of us who have predicted the possibility and prepared for it, the better the survival potential of all of us.
So head on over to seedtotable.com.au, pay a dollar and set aside some time to read it over a cuppa.
And yes, I would love to hear your feedback. Good, bad, indifferent, suggestions, all welcome.
Cheers!
How Fast Was This Duck Going?

