trusses and elbows

[Nicos]

No flowers???....ah well..just wait! ..don't pinch out anything your not certain about!!

...great diagram teakdesk

I'd just be a bit worried that looking at the faded bits of the diagram means those are the bits to remove????.....NOOOooooo!!

It's just the suckers/side shoots coming out of the armpit/node which is removed.

I always think..when in doubt..leave a while longer...sometimes when things have grown on a little more it's clearer what's going on!!

[ckfe]

I always think..when in doubt..leave a while longer...sometimes when things have grown on a little more it's clearer what's going on!!

yeah i think i'm just gonna ignore them for a bit and see if they're just being a bit shy

[Nicos]

Sounds like your babies are a bit young..the plants I grew from seed are laughable- about 8" high!!!!

Absolutely no signs of flowers!!!( fingers crossed for an Indian summer eh???..then we'll be laughing!!!!)

[Nicos]

Just a thought..might be worth giving them a bit of a feed- with allthis rain, some of the nutrients may have been washed away! ( I used seaweed extract)

[ckfe]

Just a thought..might be worth giving them a bit of a feed- with allthis rain, some of the nutrients may have been washed away! ( I used seaweed extract)

yeah i keep thinking about doing that but cos of all the rain and the fact that mine are outdoors i'm worried about drowning them!

[Incy]

When did you plant them ckfe?
Mine have 4 or 5 trusses now and some of the toms look like they are starting to ripen.
Re the diagram. Does anyone know if it's a problem cutting more leaves off (ie. above the first truss) as my GH toms are looking like a forest and I'm worried they don't have enough air circulating.

[gojiberry]

You can remove lower leaves once the first truss is set and the tomatoes are starting to grow. This allows better air circulation and light to get to the tomatoes to help ripen them. You can continue to remove leaves as each truss has formed. By the end of the season you can have a plant with 4/5 trusses and hardly any leaves.

Ian

[Incy]

Thanks gojiberry. I will check them then I think a few of the higher trusses have set too so I should be able to remove more leaves

[Incy]

thought I'd share a pic of my freshly pruned toms

[kerryp]

i feel like ive just beaten up my tomatos... now i know what i should be picking out i went to town ) some bits that should be picked out had grown quite large... can i pick off lower leaves when there is a truss there or when tomatos are on the truss instead of flowers?

[westwiltspatio]

What I don't understand about pruning tomatoes is - doesn't the leaf produce the sugar that the plant needs to ripen the tomatoes?

Ok, I understand that extra stems divert that sugar and water, but taking off leaves I don't understand.

[sarraceniac]

What I don't understand about pruning tomatoes is - doesn't the leaf produce the sugar that the plant needs to ripen the tomatoes?

Ok, I understand that extra stems divert that sugar and water, but taking off leaves I don't understand.

It is not quite as simple as that wwp. The leaves absorb the sunlight and use photosynthesis to produce chlorophyll and carbon dioxide. The CO2 is released into the atmosphere where it does all sorts of things that are both good and bad depending on your point of view so we won't go into that. The chlorophyll is basically a starch and it is that that the plant lives on. It is what makes it green and keeps it healthy.

So if you pull all the leaves off a young plant - it will die. No two ways - it will die. But the tomato vine has done its job by the time you pull the leaves off (you actually don't have to, opinion is divided on this as well) and produced lots of nice plump red (or yellow or purple or cream or green or black in fact anything but polka dot nowadays. Polka dot come next year) toms.

So pulling the leaves off a tomato plant that is going to take several weeks to die anyway (anybody want to join the League Against Cruelty to Tomatoes? Only 50 quid a year.) will force it to put all the sugars/starches into making the fruits ripen and not into the leaves.

I'm in the group of people that believe that the only benefit is that the air can get round the fruits so they are less likely to rot off so I just pull a few of the thicker leaves off.

You pays your money and takes your choice.

[westwiltspatio]

Nope, still don't get it. It's a long time since my last Biochem class, but I thought photosynthesis consumed CO2, rather than producing it, with oxygen as the waste product. (All those carbohydrates - sugars and starches - are full of carbon atoms after all, and they need to get 'em from somewhere).

Now, your description does actually make sense - once the plant has already set all its fruit and they're full size and ready to ripen, there isn't really much further need for lots of sugar production. But lots of the advice I usually see seems to be to take the leaves off much earlier, just after flower set. I don't really understand how that will help, given that there's still cell division going on that'll need carbs to build those cell walls.

[sarraceniac]

Whoops. Sorry, in sunlight your biochem class is quite right. Oxygen is produced by photosynthesis. But when the sun disappears plants actually kick out CO2 (when I was a kid the nurses used to take all the flowers out of the wards in the hospitals at night so that the patients didn't suffocate ) which is why I said we wouldn't go into that. It is true that plants produce more oxygen than they consume over their life cycle but at times they do use oxygen. My own profession did require me to know a bit about biochem before retirement but I must admit I don't fully understand it myself (which is even more why I said we wouldn't go into that ).

I must admit I have never seen advice to take off the leaves just after the trusses have set but I do know that if people do advise that then it is rather peculiar. My father who was a true Victorian (professional) gardener, would have said they were 'balmy'. Personally I would just say that we should do what works. And for the people I know, we thin leaves when the fruit is ripening but don't strip them. (Actually it is the warmth that ripens, not sunlight. Or is that another can of worms?)

[OllieMartin]

I love these cans of worms, I'm learning so much! Never was a big fan of Biology (or any subject at school for that matter), only enjoyed learning once I left school and that's missing the boat a bit!

Anyway, my book just says:
"Remove yellowing leaves below fruit trusses as the season progresses, but never overdo this deleafing process"

I would guess the logic to that is so that nutrients from the soil go to the fruit rather than the yellow leaves first.