tomato plant Q

Have I ruined my tomato plants?
I was reading a website today which said something about removing *insert technical name (maybe for side shoots?! Am I correct saying truss?)* as the plant grows.

I have 3 cherry tomato plants and 2 plum tomato plants. The plum tomato ones especially are crazy wild with bits growing out in all directions. My 3 cherry ones are less crazy, but are getting really tall. I've got 1 decent sized cherry tom growing on one plant, and 2 tiny sized ones growing on another.

All 5 plants have flowers growing, though not loads. Will they still fruit?

 

I also just read about removing everything below the first flower cluster, am I too late to do this? (I'll get photos in a mo)

If I was to remove everything below the first flowers, I'd be removing about half to 2/3 of the plants!

 

Red Plum:



Black Cherry:

 

I have been growing them for years and I have yet to figure out if removing the shoots that emerge from where the leaf joins the trunk is helpful or not. Mostly I just remove the first couple if I remove any. The theory is the same poundage will be produced either way but if kept trimmed will give fewer, but bigger, tomatoes. But then I am the most erratic, and make it up as you go along, gardener. If I was a real subsistence farmer I would be doing everything differently, or starving.

edit: Your pictures popped up - Nice plants. looking very good.

 

I'm growing a plum variety called "inca" for the second year.
They are a bush type, but I still remove some side shoots as they go crazy otherwise.

I think the cordon types were really designed for greenhouse growing.
With these you remove all side shoots and just let the main stem grow.
Your cherry type is probably this type.

As long as you dont remove, the "truss", that is the flowering stem.

 

Would it be best to leave them be since they're so big now? Or better to somehow prune them back? It's more the 2 plum ones that are wild and oddly growing! They both have "arms" growing out everywhere and in all directions, wrapped around each other etc!

 

I like having arming growing out my sides! But my tomatoes are in the garden so I can stake their arms widely apart. I do remove the side shoots of cordon/vine/indeterminate types. One reason this is recommended is to allow sunlight onto the immature fruit to ripen them and another is so that for commercial greenhouse growers they can carry on growing up and up.

Black cherry is a cordon type of tomato (if it's true black cherry named seed from a proper pack...there are other varieties with similar names that aren't cordons). I would remove any weak side-shoots and take the top out of any you can't yet see flowers forming on. Plum is a class of tomato including both bush and cordon types. I'm not sure about a variety called 'red plum' but it looks like another cordon type to me with strong vertical growth. I would try to separate out the arms. This also helps prevents pests and diseases that need moist conditions.