How are yours doing?
Any comments on removing the leaves to expose the fruit inorder to
ripen!!

"diamonds" wrote ..

How are yours doing?
Any comments on removing the leaves to expose the fruit inorder to
ripen!!

Ours are doing well and have all got fruit growing on them, be a few weeks
yet before we get some ripe.
(Growing out on the allotment)

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
W.of London. UK

On 05/07/2011 18:10, Jake wrote:
On Tue, 5 Jul 2011 08:04:47 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

How are yours doing?
Any comments on removing the leaves to expose the fruit inorder to
ripen!!

This is a question that has generated heated debate amongst my
gardening friends. One agreement is that leaves are essential to the
process of photosynthesis that gives the plant energy so simply
removing them won't help at all.

If you are serious about encouraging early ripening leave a banana
somewhere close to the largest truss of fruit. I don't think they really
need that much sun to ripen.

I fall into the camp that removes leaves below the bottom truss (not
everyone agrees!) and I also remove sucker growth (but not everyone
does and I've heard arguments about not removing more than a couple of
suckers at a time as chopping a lot in one go wounds the plant too
much). Otherwise I only remove dying or dieased leaves if I get any -
this year so far so good.

Sometimes a plant can go ballistic and produce too many trusses. I
don't have any hard and fast rule, I sort of play it "by ear" and if I
think that a plant is getting over-hopeful, I may remove a "truss" or
two at the flowering stage.

I pinch out small sideshoots but if I miss one and it runs away I leave it.

Regards,
Martin Brown

On Jul 5, 4:04*pm, diamonds wrote:
How are yours doing?
Any comments on removing the leaves to expose the fruit inorder to
ripen!!

We have been picking them for three weeks. (Greenhouse)
Removing leaves is ******** unless the leaves are diseased.

diamonds wrote:
How are yours doing?
Any comments on removing the leaves to expose the fruit inorder to
ripen!!

Mine are doing better than I expected this year, possibly due to upgrading
to Tomorite gorwbags this year. Which, unfortunately, means they grew a bit
too fast and I didn't get a chance to stake them until after they had
managed to twist into unfortunately shapes!! So a couple of them have some
serious .. kinks.

I don't think removing leaves to ripen is necessary, but I am planning this
year to remove the bottom leaves so I can top up the soil level!

harry wrote:
How are yours doing?
Any comments on removing the leaves to expose the fruit inorder to
ripen!!
We have been picking them for three weeks. (Greenhouse)

Cherry or full size? My cherry tomatoes went in much later than the full
ones, as the bigger ones need longer to ripen.

"harry" wrote ...

On Jul 5, 4:04 pm, diamonds wrote:
How are yours doing?
Any comments on removing the leaves to expose the fruit inorder to
ripen!!

We have been picking them for three weeks. (Greenhouse)
Removing leaves is ******** unless the leaves are diseased.

I'm in the "leaves are the production factories of plants" brigade but with
Blight being caused by leaves being wet I can see that removing the lower
leaves, which often look sad anyway, would help to remove the possibility
that whilst watering you help blight take hold by wetting the lower leaves.
Personally I don't remove any leaves unless they look past their sell by
date, most lower leaves drop off anyway, at least ours do out in the open
air on the plot.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
W.of London. UK

On Jul 5, 9:56*pm, wrote:
harry wrote:
How are yours doing?
Any comments on removing the leaves to expose the fruit inorder to
ripen!!
We have been picking them for three weeks. (Greenhouse)

Cherry or full size? *My cherry tomatoes went in much later than the full
ones, as the bigger ones need longer to ripen.

The earliest ones were full sized but a low variety (almost bush)
Mustkatka I think they are called.
We start the plants off quite early in a large heated propagator I
have made.
We have had cucumbers ready about the same time.

We also have some melons also nearly ready.

Had some trouble with blight this year on the tomatoes. (But not the
Mustkatka ones.)
Strangely,no blight on the potatos.

Broad beans early, heavy crop. Frozen lots.
Runner beans not doing so well, will be late I fancy.

harry wrote:
We have been picking them for three weeks. (Greenhouse)
Cherry or full size? ?My cherry tomatoes went in much later than the full
ones, as the bigger ones need longer to ripen.
The earliest ones were full sized but a low variety (almost bush)
Mustkatka I think they are called.

I have somethignt hat has a similar name! Whcih could be a typo. Muskotava
or something similar? Middle-sized red ones? I think I grew them last year
in pots, so they are probably /meant/ to be bush.
Actually, I saw I have some, I'm not 100% sure I planted them this year.
But if I have, I did them late.

We start the plants off quite early in a large heated propagator I
have made.
We have had cucumbers ready about the same time.

I planted from Feb to May, and the Feb ones all got a bit pot bound and sad
looking due to me not having time to look after them properly. :-(

We also have some melons also nearly ready.

Blimey! My melon plants all have 2 leaves still!
I've never had great success with melons.

Had some trouble with blight this year on the tomatoes. (But not the
Mustkatka ones.)

Already?? Blimey.

Broad beans early, heavy crop. Frozen lots.

Broad beans need picking, have 2 varieties so one is just coming ready now,
so need to get the 'white' ones up and eaten or frozen or dried so I can
start on the scarlets. (they are /really/ pretty flowers!)

Runner beans not doing so well, will be late I fancy.

My runner beans are awful, but the dwarf beans have little mini beans on
already and should get my first handful by start of next week

On Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:53:42 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:


I pinch out small sideshoots but if I miss one and it runs away I leave it.


I planned on being much more rigourous this year in doing this but
again have failed. I think they grow about 4 ft overnight just to
taunt me.

Didn't do much harm last year as we had lots of lovely tomatoes.
--
http://www.voucherfreebies.co.uk

On Jul 6, 11:39*am, wrote:
harry wrote:
We have been picking them for three weeks. (Greenhouse)
Cherry or full size? ?My cherry tomatoes went in much later than the full
ones, as the bigger ones need longer to ripen.
The earliest ones were full sized but a low variety (almost bush)
Mustkatka I think they are called.

I have somethignt hat has a similar name! *Whcih could be a typo. *Muskotava
or something similar? *Middle-sized red ones? *I think I grew them last year
in pots, so they are probably /meant/ to be bush.
Actually, I saw I have some, I'm not 100% sure I planted them this year.
But if I have, I did them late.

We start the plants off quite early in a large heated propagator I
have made.
We have had cucumbers ready about the same time.

I planted from Feb to May, and the Feb ones all got a bit pot bound and sad
looking due to me not having time to look after them properly. *:-(

We also have some melons also nearly ready.

Blimey! *My melon plants all have 2 leaves still!
I've never had great success with melons.

Had some trouble with blight this year on the tomatoes. (But not the
Mustkatka ones.)

Already?? *Blimey.

Broad beans early, heavy crop. * Frozen lots.

Broad beans need picking, have 2 varieties so one is just coming ready now,
so need to get the 'white' ones up and eaten or frozen or dried so I can
start on the scarlets. *(they are /really/ pretty flowers!)

Runner beans not doing so well, will be late I fancy.

My runner beans are awful, but the dwarf beans have little mini beans on
already and should get my first handful by start of next week

I start the melons off in my heated propagator. We have a very large
earth shielded conservatory that stays warm through the night.
I grow the melons up the back (earth shielded) conservatory wall that
is always warm when we get a bit of sunshine
The vines are about ten ft long. I hand pollinate. There are about
ten melons on five plants, The earliest will be ready in maybe a
fortnight.

But I have blight on one of my two varieties of tomato quite badly.
The later variety.)
I am putting it down to not disinfecting the greenhouse sufficiently
thoroughly.
(Polytunnel)

The runner beans are just picking up a bit now, we had the first
flowers about a week ago. I think we had cold nights back then that
held them back.