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