When Is Enough Enough?

[Nannysally99]

My hubby has been wandering around for a week snipping leaves off our tomatoes, they are nearly bald.
When we decide to get them all in, they live in a shoe box or two whilst they ripen. All very civilised.

[Noosner]

I stripped nearly all the foliage off my placcy greenhouse toms last weekend 'cos tomato blight had struck. As an experiment, I left half the toms on the plants to ripen. The other half went into a vast batch of green tomato and apple chutney. Even though the plant stems are blighted, so far only three of the tomatoes themselves have caught it. The rest are doing fine and ripening normally. But I don't think I've got anything like as many toms (or as much variety) as you BM, so I didn't have much to lose by experimenting!

[arpoet]

I always strip off most of the leaves in August, keep watering and feeding and able to pick a couple of toms every day right throughout autumn. I will also hang a string of onions in the greenhouse to help ripening.
Keep yer nerve guys.

[Kristen]

Was watching Monty today, and he said to take off all the leaves so the toms put all their energy into ripening. I took off all the flowers and any trusses that were too little last week. Will strip the leaves tomorrow and see what happens

I know this is the advice that has been given for eons, but it has always caused me to question how it works.

Strip lower leaves off to let air circulate around fruit and reduce / prevent disease

Strip all the leaves off the plant so that it concentrates on ripening the fruit.

Where does the plant gets its energy from in order to do that? or doesn't it need the powerhouse of photosynthesis in order to do that?

I suppose it would be easy enough for me to strip half the plants in the greenhouse, there are 18 of them, and see-for-myself ... (although this year they are very manky, not well looked after (other projects / distractions have got in the way this year) so might not be my best season to make the experiment)

[Bigmallly]

Where does the plant gets its energy from in order to do that? or doesn't it need the powerhouse of photosynthesis in order to do that?

Fair point Kristen but if you pick them green, they don't need leaves to ripen.

[Bigmallly]

Have just returned from one of the kites & have been pretty brutal:

Pic1 - Half the kite has had all leaves removed:



Pic2 - I've left this half alone for comparison:

[Kristen]

Fair point Kristen but if you pick them green, they don't need leaves to ripen.

Yup no dispute with that, just questioning whether leaves provide "power" for ripening, and I suppose also why taking them off would provide "more ripening power". Plant will still suck up water, but I can't see that the plant will grow any the less - it will still try to send out new shoots, so will use energy for that (which will have to be from "reserves" as no power from leaves). The only gain (on the energy-requirement side) is that any small / not-yet-full-size leaves won't do any growing, so maybe it fools the plant into thinking that it is dying and should hurry up and reproduce?

Other thought is that the purpose is to get air and/or sunlight direct onto the fruit ...

Look forward to seeing how your experiment turns out

[Bigmallly]

Will keep you posted, I've had a slight change of plan though. As I have 2 tunnels awaiting toms to ripen, I've completely removed all leaves in one tunnel:



And left the second tunnel untouched so can still do a comparison:



I'm gonna leave them unpicked for 2 weeks & will post updated pics of both tunnels.

[Deano's "Diggin It"]

I'm just brutal with mine BM!........

I leave the plants well be till fruit sets.......then......as they all start to swell n you get that tinge of ripening, the slaughter begins!

Start by taking off lower leaves to aid air circulation etc, then as fruit begins to ripen I start hacking off more n more to expose the fruit to as much light n heat as possible till ya left with this!





I do leave on a few leaves!

But seems to work for me!

Oh! I've had a boatload of ripe fruits from these plants already! These are the "Drag End's"

[Bigmallly]

Nice crop Deano, I'm not that bothered about the light as they don't need it for ripening but they do need the warmth.

[Penellype]

I'm not an experienced greenhouse tomato grower but I do have some plants indoors this year. My normal modus operandi is if it grows, leave it, so I tend to end up with a tangle of shoots which I do my best to tie in.

I hadn't really bargained on the weight of the Shirley trusses, so one day I found that the string I had used to support several of the trusses had broken and there were stems and fruit everywhere. I picked them up and bundled them loosely together to get them off the ground.

Yesterday, having watched Monty Don, I decided to look at the greenhouse tomatoes and remove at least some of the higher up leaves (I'd already removed the lower ones). I found that several of the stems and leaves that I had bundled together were suffering from botrytis. Luckily I had caught it before it spread to the fruit, and I now have rather more naked stems and spaced out fruit after a morning's work carefully trimming.

I think botrytis is probably one of the main reasons why it is a good idea to remove at least some leaves (and why you don't do what I tried to do!)

On the plus side, my method of allowing all the sideshoots to grow has resulted in a huge crop of Shirley (even allowing for the ones the snails have eaten), much more than if I had allowed only one stem to grow for about 4 trusses per plant. Chocolate cherry responded much less well to this, producing large numbers of sideshoots but not that much fruit.

My outdoor plants, mainly Sungold, have been trimmed of lower leaves and any leaves obstructing light to the fruit.

This is how I ripen my fruit - picked as soon as any colour is showing:

7 days worth of Sungold (top shelf and the 6 punnets on the left, from 5 plants), 4 days worth of Shirley (all the larger tomatoes, 3 plants), 3 weeks worth of chocolate cherry (3 plants) and the whole crop so far of Totem and Tumbling Tom (all the smaller red ones - 2 Totem plants, 3 tumbling Tom).

Now I'm off to finish making tomato puree out of the panfull of bajaja I picked this morning!

[Kristen]

But seems to work for me!

I'm not doubting that it works, as it has been the method of choice for as long as Old Boys have been telling me the best way to grow veg! I'm curious why it works and why it is better than leaving the leaves on

Some years ago a video of "Pruning your tomato plants" - aka pinching out side shoots - was discussed at length. The (American) making the video pruned his by removing every single leaf, and quite early on in the season. Most people thought it was ridiculously extreme and couldn't possibly work, some other people said "I do that and it works for me"

In striving for The Best Way (not withstanding that if you ask two gardeners you get three opinions ...) I'm more persuaded by the results of a side-by-side test ... and Bigmally has stepped up to the plate

one day I found that the string I had used to support several of the trusses had broken and there were stems and fruit everywhere

That happened to me three years in a row before I finally decided that I had to use a synthetic/nylon string, rather than the natural jute type. Haven't had a problem since, plus I now just "coil up" the strings on the roof-wire they hang from, and reconnect to them [and readjust for tightness] next season

my method of allowing all the sideshoots to grow has resulted in a huge crop of Shirley

Do you not have a problem supporting the weight of fruit on the sideshoots? That's one of the main reasons I train them strictly as a single cordon (another being to keep them "thin" so that they are not decreasing the airflow around the plants, in general).

picked as soon as any colour is showing:

My view is that it is better to leave on the plant for as long as possible, removed for ripening is fine at the end of the season, when frost threatens, but prior to that aren't you compromising flavour by picking early?

[Deano's "Diggin It"]

Kristen! I employ your curiously!

You are obviously a very keen and very knowledgable gardener! But I play!

It's my hobby n favourite pass time! And I don't take myself that seriously!

If it work's it work's! ..........


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[mothhawk]

My thought is that removing all or most of the leaves is going to raise the temperature around the fruit slightly. Or to put it the proper way round, without the leaves, the temperature will not drop slightly. Because when water evaporates it lowers the temperature of whatever it is evaporating from, in this case transpiring leaves. And every little helps.

I ripen green toms indoors on the counter top in a plastic punnet next to the apple bowl. I take off the snuffs, as they're going to shrivel anyway, and stick a couple of ripe toms on top. it only takes a day or two for them to colour up.

[Deano's "Diggin It"]

Nice harvest "Lady P"


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