Gardeners Delight help please

foreign_correspondent

Lotus-eater wrote: »

The striping off leaves malarkey, allows for the positioning of plants closer together, it allows airflow around the plants, so keeping down diseases and pests. It doesn't hurt the plants ability to produce fruit, in fact it may help it.
It also allows for the easier seeing of blight.

Really, it allows you to grow more tomatoes, in a more reliable way. But of course it is more work. But then so is most stuff in the garden.

My dad grew tomatoes commercially for many years - he claims the leaves are vital for enabling the plant to photosynthesise optimally and to put enough sugar into the fruit, and that the time spent stripping them off is wasted.

ETA - I don't remove any leaves, and my toms do well - I have never had tomato blight (touch wood), and I am not convinced that continually damaging the outer covering of the plant by breaking leaves off is at all good for disease prevention.

bottlehalffull

Did your dad tell you about tomato grafting? A neighbour on the allotments used to tell us about doing it - he had a pal in a commercial tomato business.
It's just been a recent thing for home growers though.

Lotus-eater

foreign_correspondent wrote: »

My dad grew tomatoes commercially for many years - he claims the leaves are vital for enabling the plant to photosynthesise optimally and to put enough sugar into the fruit, and that the time spent stripping them off is wasted.

ETA - I don't remove any leaves, and my toms do well - I have never had tomato blight (touch wood), and I am not convinced that continually damaging the outer covering of the plant by breaking leaves off is at all good for disease prevention.

Look I'm not here to defend taking leaves off, I couldn't care less if you do it or not, I'm just telling you why I do it and how I have found out that for me it's the best thing to to.
If you go to France, you see whole plants almost completely bare of leaves when ripening toms. I'm pretty sure they know a thing or two about growing toms.
I grow my toms pretty close and if I don't take leaves off at certain times the mash of foliage is much too dense to watch for problems properly. Sun and air can't get in to ventilate.

If you grow toms with loads of space, then of course taking leaves off when they are healthy is the last thing you should be doing. But I live with a small 8x6 greenhouse.

I'm glad you've never had blight, but I do most years, if you'd had it, I think you would change your mind about the leaves. One dense jungle in a greenhouse and the whole lot would be dead in a few days.

foreign_correspondent

bottlehalffull wrote: »

Did your dad tell you about tomato grafting? A neighbour on the allotments used to tell us about doing it - he had a pal in a commercial tomato business.
It's just been a recent thing for home growers though.

Yeah, he knew someone who used to graft thousands of plants years ago, to improve disease resistance - he never has though, as he had enough success with regular plants grown from seed - he was growing commercial varieties though. It is certainly something I would consider in future for growing some of the less disease resistant heirloom varieties, if I ever found one where the fruit warranted it!

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Look I'm not here to defend taking leaves off, I couldn't care less if you do it or not, I'm just telling you why I do it and how I have found out that for me it's the best thing to to.

If you go to France, you see whole plants almost completely bare of leaves when ripening toms. I'm pretty sure they know a thing or two about growing toms.
I grow my toms pretty close and if I don't take leaves off at certain times the mash of foliage is much too dense to watch for problems properly. Sun and air can't get in to ventilate.

If you grow toms with loads of space, then of course taking leaves off when they are healthy is the last thing you should be doing. But I live with a small 8x6 greenhouse.

I'm glad you've never had blight, but I do most years, if you'd had it, I think you would change your mind about the leaves. One dense jungle in a greenhouse and the whole lot would be dead in a few days.

That's cool - I am just saying why I don't - each to their own though, and whatever works for you - I do have a lot more space and I can understand why that would be a factor in deciding whether to strip leaves off or not.

gainsboroughgirl

Sign up to your local Freecycle group. People often post flags, soil, plants, bricks etc etc.

TraceyB_2

Thanks everyone for the advice - such a helpful bunch:beer: