tomato leaves

[tracy]

my tomatoe plants seem to have huge lower leaves and they seem to be getting in the way can i remove them so more energy goes into the crop or does the plant need them for photosynthesis ta

[OllieMartin]

You can definately remove them

[tracy]

ta for that

[Flummery]

I did it about 6 weeks ago!

[tracy]

did you take off all the leaves or just the lower ones also i have one tomatoe plant that has the main stem and about 1/4 of an inch above seems to have another big main stem is that usual or shall i remove that too..it does have fruit on it ?

[OllieMartin]

did you take off all the leaves or just the lower ones also i have one tomatoe plant that has the main stem and about 1/4 of an inch above seems to have another big main stem is that usual or shall i remove that too..it does have fruit on it ?

Ideally you should only have one main stem, that way all the nutrients can be channeled to the fruit trusses along it. If your plants have already forked, it's up to you as to whether to chop off the other stems or leave them.
If it has fruit on, you may want to leave it now, depending on how well developed they are and how much you'd like to keep them.

It's not an exact science, I was away for 2 weeks and when I came back a lot of my tomatoes had grown all over the place and are a little unmanageable now.

[SarzWix]

I stripped all the leaves off my tomato plants the other day, except for the very top cluster, just to try and ripen the last truss on each plant. They were getting botrytis (grey mould) on the leaves though, so I thought they were best out of the way.

[piskieinboots]

my leaves were ripped off several weeks back now, it seems to have worked a treat, I have been left with zero green tomatoes

[tracy]

for me i am just starting to get my winter crop which is normally better than the summer crop as it is a bit cooler... i have taken off all the side shoots (leaves) and they seem to be ok so far

[PhilCCFC]

All of my tomato plants are finished now, took them all out yesterday...the garden looks very bare now!

[Bren In Pots]

I've still got toms to ripen so I'll go now and take the rest of leaves of ifs going to help.

[snohare]

There's a website advertising fantastic yields possible in tomatoes if only you do what this guy's book says...he basically talks of leaving only a handful of leaves on his tomatoes once they have a good enough root system, feeding the roots obsessively, and taking bucketfuls of fruit off in result.
His logic adds up, but I can't speak for the results as I have never done it myself; my tomatoes are always too slow growing since I can only grow them outdoors.
When I was researching blight this summer I came across an American webpage from an area that had formerly been a famed traditional tomato growing area until blight became endemic. What they had finally done there, which did enable them to crop successfully despite the prevalence of spores, was to grow the tomato plants like espaliers against South facing walls, sometimes with small sloped glass or plastic roofs above, and remove the majority of the leaves, leaving never more than a single layer of leaves to catch the sun and wind. This creates a microclimate which enables the plant to dry off rapidly enough to stop the spores from infecting.
Supposedly this enabled people to start growing their beloved tomatoes again, so it might be worth trying here...