Plant guide:🍅 Tomato
Back to Plant Clinic
⚠ MinorDense side-shoot growth at leaf junctions � left unpruned, suckers redirect energy away from fruit production.
🩺
Growth
Excessive Sucker Growth Reducing Tomato Yield
Commonly affects: Solanum lycopersicum (Tomato)
The plant produces many small side shoots (suckers) growing from the junction between the main stem and each leaf branch, resulting in a dense, sprawling plant with abundant foliage but fewer, smaller fruit than expected.
Potential Causes
- 1Suckers left unpruned on indeterminate varieties, which grow indefinitely and naturally produce many side shoots
- 2Over-fertilising with nitrogen encouraging vigorous vegetative growth
- 3Not staking or supporting the plant, allowing sprawling growth that's harder to manage
Solution Steps
- 1Pinch out suckers while small, ideally under 5�8 cm long, using clean fingers or scissors.
- 2For indeterminate varieties grown for larger fruit, maintain one to two main stems by consistently removing suckers weekly.
- 3Reduce nitrogen feeding slightly and switch to a more balanced or fruit-focused fertiliser.
- 4Stake or cage the plant early to support the pruned, more upright growth habit.
Prevention Tip
Check indeterminate tomato plants weekly and pinch out suckers while they're still small � leaving them even a week too long makes removal a much larger cut and more stressful for the plant.
