top of page

Pruning

Following my second week on the farm, my farmer’s tan is in full swing (my legs are a glowing white compared to my brown arms) and my tendency to be busy on the weekend is quelled by the exhaustion of hours out in the sun.

The simplicity of my weekend days contrasts starkly to the heft of the week at work. While I anticipated that I would be doing a lot of harvesting this week, it turned out that I was assigned to help out with a number diverse projects over the course of the week. I got a glimpse of complexity of the farm’s operating as I participated in fieldwork (staking and twining, weeding, covering rows of crops, removing row cover from the field), seeding, pruning, and some harvest as well. Simultaneously, my coworkers were transplanting, cultivating, harrowing, and orchestrating plans for the season.

Of all of the tasks I carried out this week, I favorite was pruning young tomato plants. The tomato hoop house is stunning. It’s about 200 feet long with rows of tomatoes running its length. Each plant has been manipulated to have two leading stems that will produce fruit. These stems are wound with strands of twine that are attached to a line that runs along the hoop house ceiling.

The task of pruning is nuanced, so it’s a bit of a challenge each time you approach a plant to identify the “leaders,” wind them with twine to keep them growing upright. Additionally, we have to remove any excessive leaves that congest the plant (this prevents disease), and identify “suckers”to be removed from the plant. The suckers grow up off the leading stem, in the crook of a shoot node. They grow in a similar manner to the leaders and the plant puts a sizable amount of its energy into growing these branches. Removing them helps the plant to, in a sense, focus its energy on fruit-producing stems. This practice also keeps the planting neat and easy to harvest.

Pruning is a skill, and I felt grateful to be inside the greenhouse on a rainy day, honing this practice. As a systematic thinker, this task was equally satisfying as it was challenging, and the four hours I spent with my fellow pruners flew by. I find myself dichotomizing growth and death when I'm working with plants when there is, in fact, a middle ground: pruning.


bottom of page