Do I strip them now or later?

[Deano's "Diggin It"]

Bal! I hacked most of mine back this weekend gone, as you can clearly see in at least one of the pictures, the light levels are now dropping rapidly!







And Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! now photo's on! the "Chillies" have been a disaster! Leaf minor riddled em to bits, but have admitted before not to being a "Chillie" specialist!

But I have plan B in action!

Really need to get this bladdy wooden greenhouse up at home, just to save me a little earache!

[craftymarie]

I started to gradually chop leaves off weeks ago to get more light to the fruit but I'm not convinced it's made a huge deal of difference. I read that you need temperatures of at least 20℃ for ripening tomatoes - I had mine outdoors most of the time before I knew this but even now they're in the PT, the weather still isn't always reaching that tipping point. So still a lot of green toms

[maverick451]

I wouldnt panic

Last year I had a late crop of bush tomato's and I bought them inside green late september and put them on trays in the conservatory and they ripened gradually over the next couple of weeks.

[Penellype]

I'm not sure the reason for stripping the leaves off has much to do with ripening. Tomatoes will ripen without light, eg in a drawer, providing they are mature enough before they are picked. The reason for removing the leaves is to let more air in to avoid disease.

However, I have removed the lower leaves from some of my tomatoes over the past few weeks. Where the leaves can be broken off easily at the joint there is no issue, but where I have cut them off I am now finding that the leaf stub and main stem around it are sometimes going brown. In places it looks like botrytis. So it seems you are damned if you don't and damned if you do...

[Hubbard]

The rest of mine are still out there ripening slowly. Its just these 2 plants that were possible blight suspects, although the weather here has been a little cool for blight and I am not convinced. Better safe than sorry though.

I agree, why cut them off now we may get a bit of Indian summer.

[Scarlet]

However, I have removed the lower leaves from some of my tomatoes over the past few weeks. Where the leaves can be broken off easily at the joint there is no issue, but where I have cut them off I am now finding that the leaf stub and main stem around it are sometimes going brown. In places it looks like botrytis. So it seems you are damned if you don't and damned if you do...

I've had that problem. Some bush toms I've been growing all looked a bit congested, so I chopped out a load of leaves. I ended up taking them all out of the GH and putting them in my porch instead as I was getting worried

[rosiepumpkin]

Bal! I hacked most of mine back this weekend gone, as you can clearly see in at least one of the pictures, the light levels are now dropping rapidly!

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And Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! now photo's on! the "Chillies" have been a disaster! Leaf minor riddled em to bits, but have admitted before not to being a "Chillie" specialist!

But I have plan B in action!

Really need to get this bladdy wooden greenhouse up at home, just to save me a little earache!

Some nice cucumbers in there you have.

(I sound like Yoda this morning)

[Penellype]

Its looking as though the "blight" was a false alarm as none of the tomatoes brought in yesterday are showing any signs of going brown. I can't be complacent though because this nice "dry" spell has produced a morning of persistent fine drizzle and as the temperature is above 10C it must be perfect blight growing weather.

[Penellype]

As luck would have it I have the tinyest suspicion of blight on some of my Totem tomatoes this morning. I've cut down the 2 suspects and brought in all of the fruit, which are now on an observation table in my sitting room. If this is blight I would expect some of these fruits to turn brown by tomorrow.

I've arranged the fruit roughly in order of likely ripening, with the most likely on the left. I've thrown out any very small fruit, and I think you can see the difference in colour between those most likely to ripen and those less likely.

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This is the crop from 2 bush tomatoes grown outdoors in a quadgrow, about 10 decent sized tomatoes having already been harvested. The reddest tomato is about 2 inches across. There were planty of smaller tomatoes which had no hope of ripening, and still some flowers.

This is what the same tomatoes look like 10 days later - I am now going to make some sauce out of the reddest ones. There are very few on the right that look as though they are not going to turn red, but I certainly think I have lost nothing by harvesting these when I did.

[skeggijon]

I've been harvesting copius amounts of tomatoes for nearly 4 months now and decided that it's time to cut them all down and process the remaining fruit.
I love green tomato chutney, though to be honest I don't have that many unripe toms left - probably enough to make about 6 jars. The ripe ones will be used to make more Tomato and Chilli jam, Sweet Tomato sauce which the OH loves and some Tomato and Red Pepper Chutney

[Jay22]

^^^^Show off! . I haven't had one red tomato yet...a couple are getting there but not fully ripe yet. Looks like I will be looking for green tomato chutney recipes!!

I lie...I have two which fell off the plant and ripened on the windowsill. One was delicious and the other was a bit wersh!!

[Martin H]

The grey mould has been spreading among my greenhouse tomatoes, so today they got the chop. All signs of grey mould cut out, lots of unripe and half-ripe toms brought indoors to finish ripening.

Interestingly the points of entry for the grey mould seem to have been where I cut the leaves off to allow more air circulation. From there it spreads round the stem then up and down. I'm not sure what the lesson is.

[Penellype]

I have exactly the same Martin, it seems you can't win! From the point of view of ripening, I don't think it matters if the tomatoes get sunlight or not, but I have found that where I haven't cut the leaves off there is a lot of dead foliage and the occasional rotten tomato (mainly on teh bush varieties which by their very nature are more crowded).

I think next year the bush ones will get a trim, but I will only remove leaves from cordons if they are happy to come off when pulled gently.

[Scoot]

Why do people turn their tomato plants upside down to ripen the tomatoes?

And how do you do it? haha!

[BUFFS]

I started to gradually chop leaves off weeks ago to get more light to the fruit but I'm not convinced it's made a huge deal of difference. I read that you need temperatures of at least 20℃ for ripening tomatoes - I had mine outdoors most of the time before I knew this but even now they're in the PT, the weather still isn't always reaching that tipping point. So still a lot of green toms

20deg,we do not seem to get that high a temp but from 8 plants in the greenhouse we have had 3 basinfuls (gone to soups and pasta sauces) and about one and a half basinfuls still ripening so better than it looked a few weeks ago, I stripped all the lower leaves 3 weeks ago and with this sun the cherry tom plants have pushed out another 4 trusses which seem to take only days to grow and ripen ( about the size of actual cherries) and a lovey taste, I don't know the strain as I was given them by a fellow grower..