Pruning most of the tomato leaves?

[Josetom]

I just saw this short video explaining how it's better to prune most of the leaves and leave just the top leaves.. I have seen other people do it but 1) sunscald 2) aren't the leaves necessary to make more photosynthesis meaning more flavorful tomatoes?

I imagine less pest pressure would be a pro of this method.. what do you think?

[DriftlessRoots]

Full disclosure, I didn’t and won’t watch the video. The click-baity title warns me off first;people will do anything to get views. Plants need leaves. Maybe the fact that she’s growing under cover means something, but I smell BS.

[Mark_Thompson]

My plants look like that when I get absolutely destroyed by Septoria. But healthy leaves stay on. Photosynthesis exists.

[bower]

I only prune when leaves are diseased, usually, and let them keep anything they're using for fruit-shade or photosynthesis.
This kind of pre-emptive pruning is common in high density commercial greenhouse plantings using single stem pruning, tight spacing, and a steady flow of liquid nutrients. It could improve air circulation in those very dense plantings and prevent rapid development of foliage diseases where leaves of the plants would be contacting one another in the low canopy.
Ironically, the worst diseases are often spread by pruning in these high maintenance grow ops.

[maxjohnson]

Don't know why they don't do the same for their watermelon and pumpkin, just grow the vine by itself with no leaves.

[MissS]

I have seen greenhouse growers do this and they do it for good reason but I would never ever say that everyone should do this. They grow on a single stem and keep the foliage pruned to just below the bottom cluster of tomatoes. The vine keeps reaching up and they keep lowering the vine so that the stems actually will form a coil on the ground. The pruning keeps the vine reaching and producing. However they need protection from the sun to prevent sunscald. I would also think that the fruits may not taste as good if the plant had more foliage to feed the fruit. I will pass on growing my plants this way.

[JRinPA]

They take the leaves off to prevent disease, looks matter and quantity matters, not taste or size. It is a business to turn out round, red junk for the supermarkets and restaurants. I like round and red just fine, but not junk. (edit to add: they won't even be red until ethylened on the way...)

For someone to say "Stop growing tomatoes if you aren’t doing this" and then show THAT...they should have to go sit in the corner for the rest of the day and think about it. Less dumb words would come out of the cornhole the next day.

That is not single stemming either..."prune the tomato to one main stem at the bottom"... so... don't plant twins? LOL there is only ever one stem AT THE BOTTOM! No need to prune it...Into the corner, I say...

[karstopography]

Wasn’t there a thread on this on the other site?

I’ve barely pruned this year. Disease has been almost nonexistent with the minimal rain. Sunscald is generally a threat year in and year out. The tomatoes have been top notch on flavor. I’m a believer tomatoes need leaves to produce flavor.

[svalli]

This is constant fight in the tomato growing groups in Finland. People are pruning their tomato plants to single stem with almost no leaves. They explain that the side shoots and leaves are taking energy away from the fruits and I always ask from them that, what is this energy, which the green leaves are consuming. That lady also talks about the energy, but energy comes from sun and plants need leaves to use that energy. Nutrients are other thing, but one should provide enough nutrients to the plants, so that they can grow green leaves to absorb the energy from the light.

In the greenhouse I have to prune some of the lower leaves and I do also remove some of the suckers, to get better airflow, but I do it very moderately and later in the season. I do not prune the outside growing ones at all.

[slugworth]

Once a plant gets diseased it needs all the foliage it can get.
Mother nature doesn't prune and mother nature waters from the top down.

[rossomendblot]

I prune to a single stem mostly to improve airflow. Later in the season the greenhouse gets too humid and botrytis becomes an issue. Outdoors, late blight is an issue most years. I also grow tomatoes quite close together, with about 33 cm between plants outdoors, and the raised beds would become a jungle if I let all of the stems grow. We also get strong (40+mph) winds several times during the summer, and when the plants get top heavy with fruit they are difficult to support even with a single stem.

[worth1]

Leaves provide energy not take energy.
I only cut leaves that are diseased or touching the soil.

[Paulf]

Oh, and by the way, you must remember that everthing you see on the internet is absolutely true and it must be done exactly the way the person using you tube says or your life will end in disaster!

On this one, I am calling B!@# S&**!

[JRinPA]

I am tempted to prune one like that...but to what end? What they showed there would take 3 tomatoes worth of space the way I grow them. I take that back, if you count width between the rows...I guess I grow 9 or 12 tomatoes in the space for each of those potted plants.

I prune to a single stem mostly to improve airflow. Later in the season the greenhouse gets too humid and botrytis becomes an issue. Outdoors, late blight is an issue most years. I also grow tomatoes quite close together, with about 33 cm between plants outdoors, and the raised beds would become a jungle if I let all of the stems grow. We also get strong (40+mph) winds several times during the summer, and when the plants get top heavy with fruit they are difficult to support even with a single stem.

I do my tomatoes about like that, outdoors in the ground...has to be 5 years now that I mostly do single/double stem? I don't do them all the exact same, but it keeps me busy, and I like the organization. To me it an nutrient balance between the dirt and the plant. I limit stems to one or two per root system. But I want each leaf on those stems to make sugar for the tomatoes on those stems. I like the controlled steady crop of big tomatoes that I get growing this way. The biggest danger is waiting too long to prune. Let a stem get too big, and that is a big hole in the plant. Also, the plants have to be dry so that you don't spread disease while suckering.

For the most part I hope and expect that everyone, after a few years of learning, grows stuff the best way that works for them in their particular plot and environment. Pretty sure I had fresh tomatoes deep into October last year, long after being sick of sandwiches. They didn't taste like August tomatoes, not possible with the small fraction of solar energy still available, but I was making lots of fresh salsa right up until they were done.

[Stitchingmom]

I love it when my tomatoes look happy and healthy. I couldn't give them a crew cut like that. I clear the bottom leaves and cut off damaged or diseased leaves, but that is pretty much it.

[JRinPA]

I don't have a high opinion of most youtube but that "9 myths" from epic gardening is pretty good. Some aren't myths; I've never even heard of "sun ripening"...but 5 of the first 6 sound right to me.


I disagree at 6:30 part. If you pick tomatoes early, where do they go? Into the hot kitchen counter, to breed fruit flies? Those are opinions, qualitative opinions like figure skating scores. Not quantifiable. So they slipped a bit there. Down to a 5.2.

I would like to see the double blind testing for fully ripe refrigerated versus full ripe day picked. Something tells me that didn't happen...I'm pretty sure I could tell by looking at a tomato, even warmed up to room temp, if it had been in the fridge or not. Would need to be double blind plus a blindfold.

The girls sounds like she is from western PA with the dry "owt" and "hawt" growing season. The last myth she talks about watering, and splitting tomatoes. I don't water much, especially with tomatoes ripening. That is why I like to water a little the day before a big August rain. Pick the ripe ones, get the rest used to some water again to maybe prevent splitting. Seems to work. Sometimes.

edit:well I watched another couple of their (epic gardening) videos and they are pushing/selling Cherokee Carbon F1 and listing it as an heirloom beefsteak tomato. So they are cast back down to the youtube mob, in my eyes. So many of them are just yapping and clapping for money.

[Shule]

In my experience some kinds of leaves can stunt a plant, and removing them can let the plant grow at a decent rate again. However, this is generally only with leaves that meet certain criteria under suboptimal conditions, and they're usually the oldest leaves:

- The leaves developed under different conditions than the plant is currently in (especially with regard to the kind of light); this is more of an issue with watermelon than tomatoes; watermelon are very sensitive to light changes compared to tomatoes.
- The the plant experienced some kind of shock or severe stress during when the leaves were present.
- The leaves are diseased
- The plant isn't adapted to its conditions, yet.
- You're growing the plant in a pot that's too small. In this case, pruning old leaves does promote new growth, but it's not going to get much bigger (beyond replacing the leaves you remove) until you repot it, give it some decent fertilizer consistently, or something. The situation with the stunted plants is actually similar to this (except they can grow out of the problem), which leads me to think the roots are too small, damaged, or something.

As to why some leaves might stunt a plant, I'm not sure. It could be that leaves damaged by stress don't function as well (I have read something to that effect with regard to drought stressed leaves) and the plant doesn't have enough roots to support new leaves with the current ones with reduced functionality, which aren't benefitting the plant as much as they could, but are still taking up the maximum number of leaves the roots can support just as much.

Plants tend to be happier if they're growing. It's better to prune off old leaves to promote new growth than to let a plant do nothing and gradually dwindle, due to none of the leaves ever being replaced.

Anyway, I'm not endorsing the method in the video. I've never tried that.

[Seven Bends]

I don't have a high opinion of most youtube but that "9 myths" from epic gardening is pretty good. Some aren't myths; I've never even heard of "sun ripening"...but 5 of the first 6 sound right to me.

I disagree at 6:30 part. If you pick tomatoes early, where do they go? Into the hot kitchen counter, to breed fruit flies? Those are opinions, qualitative opinions like figure skating scores. Not quantifiable. So they slipped a bit there. Down to a 5.2.

I would like to see the double blind testing for fully ripe refrigerated versus full ripe day picked. Something tells me that didn't happen...I'm pretty sure I could tell by looking at a tomato, even warmed up to room temp, if it had been in the fridge or not. Would need to be double blind plus a blindfold.
...
edit:well I watched another couple of their (epic gardening) videos and they are pushing/selling Cherokee Carbon F1 and listing it as an heirloom beefsteak tomato. So they are cast back down to the youtube mob, in my eyes. So many of them are just yapping and clapping for money.

I've watched a lot of Epic Gardening's videos and keep encountering stuff that's just plain wrong. For example, at about 6:40, he refers to that orange tomato as "breaker" stage. Actually, breaker stage is just barely past fully green, when the blossom end of the fruit begins to show a tinge of color. Here's a pic of the official classifications:

tomato color class.jpg

The reason it's important is breaker stage is when the tomato no longer takes any nutrients from the plant and is considered to be "vine ripened." It can be picked at that point with no loss of flavor (at least, according to the scientists). So Epic Gardening is telling you this stage is when the tomato is almost fully colored, which is wrong.

I share your skepticism about the refrigeration advice. Obviously refrigeration is preferable if the alternative is rotting on the counter, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to refrigerate your tomatoes if you don't need to. Science has proven that refrigeration has a deleterious impact on tomatoes. See here, for example:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1613910113 Maybe Hat Guy in the Epic Gardening video can't tell the difference, but most people can. (And I got a nice chuckle when he whipped out his pretentious salt container.)

They definitely shouldn't call Cherokee Carbon an heirloom, but it truly is a great tomato. Consider trying it if you haven't already (if you like dark tomatoes).

[worth1]

I stopped watching gardening videos years ago.
This is the first one I've seen in years.

[maxjohnson]

I used to disagreed with a lot of things from this guy, but I'd say he's more relaxed about his approach now. Pretty much sums up my approach to more hands off approach to tomato growing: