tom leaves-on or off?

[kitty]

eeee....its like i've never bin gorn!!
yes...its THAT kitty....well-it is to anyone who can remember me ;D

anyway-me tomato plants are lovely and bushy-inderterminates-and have on average 6 or 7 trusses-thebottom 2 sets are tomatoes the rest are flowers....thing is....whats this i hear about stripping the bottom leaves off-should i?or is it just for commercial growers?i'd like to hear the pros and cons.....
ta!
kitty
xx

[kitty]

[amphibian]

I strip off bottom leaves, purely because they have a habit of trailing on the ground, which is a source of disease. Improves airflow too. Other than that I am not a big fan of rampant tomato pruning. I think all those wounds leave them open to disease.

I always bury my toms deep, this tends to result in lots of suckers emerging at ground level however, I remove these too.

[redimp]

Hiya Kitty - How's things?  I take off any foliage that is near or touching the ground. 

[tim]

What kept you, Kitty? Great to see the Gallery again!

I de-leaf mainly for ease of watering - or when the leaves have 'gone over'.

[kitty]

hmmm....i wonder if i've gone too far(no change there then...) ::)
but -as you say tim-i couldnt see to water,and i was worried about air circulating properly-dad was in Burma and i know how he must have felt!!
anyway-too late now-i've just left the tops leafy and taken off the bottom 2'6"'s worth of leaves-seems all quiet on the western front at the mo...hope i dont get struck down with galloping rot....i was fairly..er...rigourous!
we'll see!
toms at present are the size of marbles and the plants still look healthy
kitty
x

[daileg]

ive done a the same thing Kitty mine are looking good real healthy green have one or two tips gone a little brown going to leave the greenhouse door open at night from now on though varying temp is too much between the day and the night temp

[antipodes]

Oh yes tomato pruning! My neighbour told me I had too much foliage, so he helped me take off a few rampant shoot, but I admit that I find it hard to break the branches that are flowering :(
They said "Oh you'll get lots of fruit but it will be small." Is that true? And does it matter?
Also for cherry tomatoes, I realise now that I should have kept them well separate, they are very bushy, and have literally hundereds of flowers!!!

Once the tomatoes are very big and bushy, which stems should I remove? I took off all the young sideshoots but I can see that they are looking rather crowded!!
PS my other neighour has got some toms in like a hothouse, they are already bigger than me!!!!! and they seem to have loads of fruit. But they have probably been sprayed with loads of chemicals too :(