Monty's D -Toms qustion

wallbash

On Friday Monty Don said it was time to remove ALL leaves from the green house tomato plants . So I did as I was told .

Question , stop watering ?

mi_jardin

Nope, keep watering them!

Sally_A

Monty's advice is to get the plant to concentrate on ripening the fruits you have rather than the plant putting effort into leaves and new flowers.

Still water and feed, and bung a few banana skins onto the top of the pot to help things along.

djohn2002uk

wallbash wrote: »

On Friday Monty Don said it was time to remove ALL leaves from the green house tomato plants . So I did as I was told .
Question , stop watering ?

Another example of the rubbish you get from a failed jeweler pretending he knows about gardening.
From my post on Aug 21st :- I believe it was in this thread a few weeks ago where people were discussing how many leaves to cut off your tomato plants, varying from enough to let the sun get to the fruit to virtually stripping the plants. Well, here's a clip from a gardening mag this week.
"Tomatoes need encouraging to ripen so all growing points should be removed now if you haven't already. This focuses the plants energy on maturing existing fruit. You can also snap or cut off the bottom leaves, but leave all the leaves above the bottom fruiting truss. The plant needs them to photosynthesise and send sugars to fruit If you remove all the leaves the fruit will lack flavour and sweetness."

Little_Vics

in laymans terms for me (because I can't grow stuff), does that mean leave SOME of the leaves? I've got some toms in a bushy-type-thingy under leaves - so do I take some of these off?? V confused, but to be honest that doesn't take much.

djohn2002uk

Firstly, don't put yourself down. Everyone started somewhere and you'll soon find that you'll learn a bit each year and before you know it you wont need advice and you'll find you never needed as much as you thought anyway.
What the highlighted piece in red means is only strip the leaves off below the first tomatoes and leave the rest to aid the fruit in ripening. It might help to take a few leaves out here and there to let a little air and light in but nothing is gained by defoliating any plant (although some people think letting the sun get to them speeds up ripening, the sun is not needed, that is why they ripen well in a warm dark place). In fact it will end up killing a lot of plants. Don't worry now that you've done it, they will survive but keep watering as you did before.

[Deleted User]

I took the leaves off my 24 heavily laden tomato plants some time ago and they have and are, ripening beautifully. That includes outdoor and under cover plants. I reduced watering but still fed as usual. It does work and it works well

djohn2002uk

How do you know that they wouldn't be ripening just as fast and tasting better with the leaves left on? In fact, what is the reason for taking the leaves off?

Sambucus_Nigra

djohn2002uk wrote: »

Another example of the rubbish you get from a failed jeweler pretending he knows about gardening.
From my post on Aug 21st :- I believe it was in this thread a few weeks ago where people were discussing how many leaves to cut off your tomato plants, varying from enough to let the sun get to the fruit to virtually stripping the plants. Well, here's a clip from a gardening mag this week.
"Tomatoes need encouraging to ripen so all growing points should be removed now if you haven't already. This focuses the plants energy on maturing existing fruit. You can also snap or cut off the bottom leaves, but leave all the leaves above the bottom fruiting truss. The plant needs them to photosynthesise and send sugars to fruit If you remove all the leaves the fruit will lack flavour and sweetness."

Well, apart from the fact that I remove most of my leaves anyway and all my toms are lovely and sweet. Mine get chopped back as soon as they set one truss. As long as the top 3 leaves are left on, there will be enough to photosynthesize.

annie123

rather than stripping off all the leaves they could just be picked and bought indoors to ripen, they'll end up with the same taste.

Mine keep all but their lower leaves, till the end and are often outside till mid October but I'm in London and they are south facing against a wall.
Sometimes they get some bubble wrap over them if nights get a bit nippy, just to get that extra jar of green baby tom chutney at the end of the season.

officeguru

I thought I would add my tuppence worth. I've been growing tomatoes for years and years .. some good years some bad... Anyway, I definitely won't be stripping all the leaves off the plants.. I take the leaves off below the fruiting truss and, as I pick them, I remove the next set of leaves and so on... and also any damaged leaves... The only exception is when I have that many leaves that it is stopping light getting to them.. I then cut the odd leaf off here and there...

I have to agree with some of the other posters that some of the so-called tv experts talk a lot of rubbish... Geoff Hamilton was the only one that I ever listened too and some of the ones before him, as they weren't 'yuppie' gardeners and had worked years for big estates and they certainly knew what they were talking about...

I'm sure there is an old adage: If it sounds daft, it usually is daft...

Cheers