Question
I bought a tomato plant at The Home Depot in May. I replanted it and keep it on my porch. I started seeing small tomatoes about two weeks ago. I was wondering if I have to trim the plant in order it should grow faster. Can I or should I cut off the branches that don't have flowers/tomatoes growing on them? How often and how much should I water them? I also noticed very small insects crawling in the soil. Is it O.K. or dangerous to the tomatoes? What can I do/use to get rid of them?

Thank You,
Rachel

Answer
Rachel do not worry about the insects unless you start seeing damage to the plant.

You should never trim tomato plants except for the suckers.  The suckers are the growth between the main stem and the leaf axil of the flower stem.  If you're not sure which vine is the sucker, I've attached several sites that will give you an illustration of where the sucker is located.

http://msucares.com/pubs/infosheets/is0560.pdf

http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/pages/g00031.asp

http://ceinfo.unh.edu/pubs/HGPubs/baskweav.pdf#search='tomato%20suckers%20pinch'

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM608.pdf

http://msucares.com/lawn/garden/vegetables/tomatoes/

By removing the suckers, the plant concentrates all of its energy on increasing the amount of fruit on the main vine and their size.  If you leave them on, you will get more fruit on the extraneous sucker vines, but they will take much longer to grow and the fruit will be smaller.  They also become very unruly after a while and begin sprawling.  This could reduce the amount of air circulation between plants and can result in fungus diseases.

I hope this information helps.  Please write again if I can ever be of assistance.

Regards,

Mike