Removing most of the leaves from your tomatoe plants

[BobOverbeck]

There is a book advertised on this website which claims you can raise larger and sweeter tomatoes by removeing most of the leaves. Have any of you ever tried that and was it sucessful?
Bob

[opabinia51]

No, if you remove the leaves during the summer what will happen is the plant will no longer be able to synthesize sugars through photosynthesis.

What you do is prick the leaves off in the fall to ripen any tomatoes that are not yet ripe.

[atascosa_tx]

You want to keep most leaves on the plant to shade the fruit and avoid sun scalding...though there are that practice pruning which involves removing suckers that grow where the branches grow out from the main stem..doing this causes the plant to focus more energy to develop the fruit rather than growing foliage..your over all productivity reduced, but ya get better developed fruit. I myself don't prune any suckers..I cage my plants and let them go to town.

[Quietly Awesome]

BUT, if you remove most of the leaves before you plant the seedling... then plant DEEP... or lay the plant in a trench... you WILL get a stronger root system and plant.

[opabinia51]

You betcha!

Here is the tip that I learned from a local organic expert, prick all the leaves from the stem except those of the crown and bury the whole stem in the ground. Add some kelp meal to the whole before filling with dirt.

This will provide you with a strong root system as the auxins and giberellins in the soil (plant rooting horemones) will stimulate root growth along the stem.

And pinch the suckers off the plant as it grows. This will increase the production of tomatoes because the plant will put it's energy into fruit production rather than vine production.

And try those tastey heirlooms! Mmmmm mmm, so good! I love them.