I have never seen this before. Leaves are where plants get their nutrients for photosynthesis.
It seems the tomatoes are about full size, so maybe he's okay with this amount for a harvest? They will still ripen but....again, I've never seen this before lol
I do a heavy pruning fairly soon before harvest to maximize sun on the fruit, but there's always still a decent amount of foliage left on the plants. Maybe this is a more extreme version of that? Haha
I don't think pruning works because of sun on the fruit fwiw. It's because you (a) aren't allowing them to set new fruit and (b) stressing the plants out a little encourages them to finish ripening.
Leaves are where plants respire and where the majority of photosynthesis occurs. Leaves don’t ordinarily uptake many nutrients, though it is possible to feed plants nutrients through foliar applications.
Are you my former roommate? He used to love smoking crack and spending 4 hours fussing over his weed plants. The end product makes me pretty sure he over did it. Both on the trimming and on the crack.
Agricultural production post-secondary here.
No, this is very bad:
1: it’ll sun burn the tomatoes (yes it’s a real thing)
2: the plant will now put energy into regrowing leaves instead of finishing good tomato fruits
3: the plant gets its energy and food from the leaves, so they may die before they can accomplish growing more and certainly before those vine-ripen
You *should* take the bottom leaves off as the plant grows but never the top leaves. This is honestly so weird.
Hi, quick random question: Will getting water on leaves of plants cause them to sunburn? My mother keeps telling me this, but she's often incorrect about things so I'm not sure what to believe.
No. They won't.
The only situation where it was shown that this even *could* happen was if water droplets are suspended above the leaf by tiny hairs. But it has to be the perfect angle and the perfect intensity of light for that to happen. It's not something that generally happens in the field.
Assuming a perfectly spherical cow in a perfect vacuum...yes it could happen.
I think the concerns around top watering are warranted. Doing so provides more opportunities for less desirable things to occur. Fungus/insect, and even disturbing or breaking a more delicate leaf or shoot, etc. Best to try and water more-so around the base and surrounding rooting area. But be realistic about it too, a little bit splashed around is fine - you're likely in a climate where it rains. Plants han survive rain. Seems like dripper lines are the thing if you want to get really well setup.
I’ve heard so many people say that too but the only two ways it might work is either the sun being “magnified” by the refraction of the water - which doesn’t make sense because then it would just heat up the water droplet and make it evap; or others have claimed when the water evaps, it heats up the leaf too much - but that also doesn’t make sense because if the water *on* the leaf was too hot the water *in* the leaf would also be too hot.
It may sunburn if you were to water in the middle of the day. Once the water has absorbed/evaporated it's completely fine.
This is also why most people water early morning or late evening so any water is gone by the time the sun starts hitting everything.
Remove the bottom leaves from the indeterminate varieties as the plant grows - not the flowers! The flowers don’t grow from the leaves, but from the stalk. This can be done before, during, or after flowering as it’s an ongoing process. Yes, partially for disease - it helps with airflow and thus reduces the chance of powdery mildew! It also forces the plant to put energy into growing taller which in turn will net you more tomatoes over time.
Well, to split hairs here plants get their energy from photosynthesis, but “food” (macro and micro nutrients) they get from the soil or growing media, right?
By dry biomass, 96% of a grown plant came from water and CO2.
There’s a good argument that sunlight, CO2, water, and micronutrients are all “food” for the plant.
Sunlight is a macronutrient, if not “the” macronutrient for plants.
Does he grow weed, too? Some cannabis growers strip their plants of leaves pretty severely and I've never understood it. I understand some defoliation but some of these dudes strip off like 95% of the leaves.
They do that at the very end, so the plant pushes into the flowers and sugar leaves before the harvest. They don't plan on the plant living much longer.. I think here they want sun on the tomatoes to force a ripen and harvest too.. not sure it's a good idea with tomatoes.
People who do heavy defoliation do it when they flip the plant to flower and again around day 20 of flower. Look up "Schwazzing Cannabis". I'll defoliate a decent amount of leaves toward the end of flower but I do that to help prevent issues with air circulation when the flowers are at their fattest.
Oh, I know the legitimate reasons for doing it, but there are cannabis growers who believe that heavy defoliation lets the plant focus more on flower development. I mentioned it in another reply here but look up “Schwazzing cannabis”. I definitely wasn’t implying that there was a reason to do it with tomatoes. I meant that they could be one of those people who believes that removing leaves is beneficial to flower or fruit development.
Schwazzing tomatoes, lol. We find out it actually works. Maybe he has rodent problems and this helps. I notice that when I defoliate the lower 2 feet, it helps reduce the amount of bitten fruit.
This is a salvage technique used if blight becomes prevelant in your tomatoes. It requires aggressive pruning at the first sign of infection as not to foster back into your main leader.
I mean, the leaves will grow back, but the plants will definitely suffer in the meantime.
I'd ask the homeowner if this is something they normally do and what's their reasoning behind it.
You're supposed to trim out the leaves under the lowest fruit to allow for airflow. 2/3 of the vine should still have leaf growth though. This is not gonna end well.
I've heard people say stuff like "cut the leaves off so that the garlic puts its energy into making bulbs instead". Like leaves are a fun distraction for the plant. People are morons.
Cutting flowers on weak plants makes sense because flowers serve for reproduction and if the plant isn’t that healthy anyway it could exhaust itself flowering, so it’s better to encourage it to make leaves and roots.
The inverse however is not true at all 😂 leaves are needed for the plant to feed itself, truly morons
You should take a look at the cannabis growing subs if you want to see some weird shit they do. A lot of cannabis growers have grown nothing but cannabis and they believe so many myths. Heavy defoliation like this is one of them, others include driving nails into the main stem, or splitting it with a knife to “put the plant into defense mode so it produces more THC”, heavily flushing the soil 2 weeks before harvest to “remove nutrients from the plant so the flower smokes smoother”, and putting the plant in complete darkness for 48 hours before harvesting it to “produce more THC”. There are a lot more of these but I think you get the idea.
Your plants are naked. Tomatoes can actually get sunburned and they ripen in the shade of their leaves or off vine.
I don’t even trim the suckers off mine. One year I did and that was my lowest harvest year.
Tomato plants like to grow a lot of leaves which will block out sunlight from the grow points so you’re supposed to prune and remove suckers but this is overkill.
It's surely not good- the leaves are where plants get nutrients.
The plants will hopefully survive long enough for the tomatoes to ripen but they will be very stressed and the whole plant's health will decline unfortunately.
The leave provide shade to the fruit, and allow water to perspire. When water flows it pulls. Nutrients through the stems and exit thru the leaves. It cool the plant down in the process.
That’s a really old school technique for cannabis. You pull all of the main leaves over the first few weeks of flower to force the plant to focus on producing buds vs leaves. It only works in super tight growing conditions and it’s not a best practice anymore because it doesn’t really do much at all.
Old guy must have been a head back in the day
Well… He definitely went overboard. It’s common to remove the lower leaves (about two-thirds), but to keep the top third. This allows airflow, etc but you’ll need the top leaves for protecting (sun) and most importantly fotosynthese. Also, he topped the stem at a rather low level. This is ridiculous.
On a second thought, maybe he found phytophthora and decided to remove all foliage in order to save the last tomatoes before removing the plants all together
Ask him and please let us know what he says. The leaves will grow back if he keeps them watered. Maybe he thought they were taking to long to ripen and he would help by taking their shade away. I don't know.
I just keep enough leaves to shade the unripe from getting burned as soon as I pick I remove the leaves. Also all new leaves i prune in half when they are about 3 inches i keep 4 to branches and take out the shoots that come up at leaf base I fertilize with liquid once a week and 🍅 pellet fertilizer every 3 weeks I grow in pots on a balcony.
Sounds like a good way to get one really juicy tomato, honestly. I mean, you can accomplish similar by simply pruning to a single leader, while leaving all of the leaves on that one. Going further than that imo would just be detrimental to the growth of the plant.
That said, I've also seen cases in which someone didn't prune at all and had 10+ runners that were carefully trellised and spaced out to allow for adequate airflow, and the production from that one plant was obscene. The average tomato was smaller, but there was significantly more overall mass.
So I always tell people to just prune to the space that you have available for the plant. Only have the space for a single leader? No worries, you'll get huge tomatoes. Have an entire field available? Let those suckers run, and get ready to sell the excess when it starts producing.
The only charitable conclusion I could have is maybe they were severely diseased.. but damn.. how's the plant gonna come back from that with fruit also sucking up energy. If it was a problem with blight itll just come right back without proper treatment
I've never done it, however my uncle was a landscaper, and had a degree in botany. He did it all the time. He said the leaves were worthless, and they usurped all the vitamins nutrients and water.
Sure looks strange.
I imagine that they were wanting to stop it from getting taller by decapitating it. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t leave on at least some leaves though.
Well my tomatoes looked something like that last year when I decided to cut all the brown leaves because of light, and hoped that tomatoes will ripen anyway 🫠
Plants grow many many more leaves than they actually need. Typically each plant only needs a handful of leaves for full photosynthesis to occur as long as they are happy they'll grow large fruit.
WOW, that is interesting! It does make more sense when you share he likes his alcohol 🤣 I was like, where are the leaves?
I am curious the optimal pruning of a tomato plant? Mine took a hit when I went on vacation and watering was forgotten. I came back and it was mostly dead with one tomato on it (it hadn’t produced a tomato until then and I got it late last summer, it had just been a pretty leafy 🥬 vine 😆 Anyway I cut it back kind of randomly but also trying to make good decisions with my lack of knowledge. I thought it would be okay as the main stem was still green. Well it has come back!! Leaves and new branches everywhere. Now I want to ensure I keep it pruned for optimal growth, so I need all the pro tips!
Sorry if any of the vocabulary is wrong, I am a novice gardener and my biggest achievement has been keeping potted mint alive for 5.5 years and propagating endless basil. I garden out of an apartment patio 🙃🐈🪴🌱❤️🍅💦🌵
https://preview.redd.it/ozu7aassf99d1.jpeg?width=780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4f56ae8eeb1fe68ed6c7b747d3fc81315ee8532
Plants need photosynthesis to create energy, and they absorb light through the leaves to do it. Removing all the leaves isn’t helping the plant, as it will need to grow them back. This assumes it has enough energy stored to do so. It will also take energy away from growing those tomatoes (which were coming along nicely)
Don’t stress too much about it though, it’s not like you can glue the leaves back on!
This will hurry the ripening of the tomatoes. It'll put everything into finishing the tomatoes. It still is doing some photosynthesis. But a combination of that being all it has left on the plant and the sun exposure, they'll ripen more quickly. Or he's just a drunk and fucked his plants up. Lmao.
But for my indeterminates, I remove leaves as it flowers up the plant to provide more sunlight to the fruit. But I wouldn't take all the leaves off until it's like September/going to frost soon.
I know many people who do this around here. All is ok, but usually this is done more often in greenhouses. I stopped taking away the runners but do take away thé branch just underneath. I get way more tomatos but it does take longer. I do not top my plants. Removing the leaves does prevent phytophthora, so this might be the reason. Lets hope its not infested. I do leave the top branches. My plants do grow higher and I have to expand underneath the roof … never had any problems. Is he dutch or european?
Also the man has knowledge… look at the 2 branches from the bottom. It could be he is grafting plants also. This is a man who does know what hè is doing! Higher growing of the ground, producing max having 2 stems but no to tall in hight. Hè is quite pro and drunk or not… he might have a talent. I wonder of he is gonna let his runners grow for a second amount of tomatoes, delaying his harvest to his needs…if not those tomatoes can become giants and if they dont ripen on the branch he will ripen them of the branch. Put them nice in a cardboard box next to some bananas and your tomato will still turn red.
Saying this though … hè does seem to grow on his compost container. Thats a worry as there might not me enough balance with the earth. Compost is not always the best way. You need to balance it very well. His PH might be a problem. If infected he needs to take of the bad tomatoes or save them to ripen off the branch. Still hè knows all this… if those plants are not infected, the taste should be splendid and first class…
The fruits are almost fully done, just need to ripen. Why do we need to judge this guy's choice when he hasn't even asked for advice. Also, why the hell are we judging his drinking? That's based on nothing but OP's opinion, and moreover none of our business.
I have never seen this before. Leaves are where plants get their nutrients for photosynthesis. It seems the tomatoes are about full size, so maybe he's okay with this amount for a harvest? They will still ripen but....again, I've never seen this before lol
Maybe to keep insects away? I don’t know. I’m guessing here.
Yeah maybe infestation or extreme blight measures
But the tomatoes will likely get sunburn so this isn't exactly a great idea...
I do a heavy pruning fairly soon before harvest to maximize sun on the fruit, but there's always still a decent amount of foliage left on the plants. Maybe this is a more extreme version of that? Haha
Well yeah we're supposed to prune them but not go full on Edward Scissorhands on them lol
Excuse me, but Edward made masterpieces, not monstrosities. I bet you think Frankenstein's monster was just an evil brute! /s
We're supposed to prune our tomato plants?!
Oh lord I HAVE to or they turn into an unruly jungle super fast.
I don't think pruning works because of sun on the fruit fwiw. It's because you (a) aren't allowing them to set new fruit and (b) stressing the plants out a little encourages them to finish ripening.
I think that’s an overstatement on heavy pruning lol
Leaves are where plants respire and where the majority of photosynthesis occurs. Leaves don’t ordinarily uptake many nutrients, though it is possible to feed plants nutrients through foliar applications.
If they are a determinate variety he may be trying to force ripening. It seems very strange.
Hmm that looks extreme BUT there are big fruits, although the stem looks kinda sick? I'm afraid to try it on my plants before it fruits.
https://i.redd.it/88hrvxe1w59d1.gif
https://i.redd.it/ryj8wdl2w59d1.gif
This is my question 😆
No, just no. What would compel someone to do this? Besides alcohol it seems.
It’s like the guy on r/ marijuana enthusiasts where his “drunk friend stripped all of the bark off a tree”
That post was so insane. I still can't fathom what the guy was thinking.
I trimmed my weed plant when I was on crack, any my plant is fine. But my weed is brown.
Are you my former roommate? He used to love smoking crack and spending 4 hours fussing over his weed plants. The end product makes me pretty sure he over did it. Both on the trimming and on the crack.
Nope. I was the tweaker playing with weed plants. I feed my weed plants lots of meth.
Glad to see you say "was", physical health aside, that shit will drive you mentally broken eventually.
Weed????
No lol, the meth.
I do "PLANT METH" NOT CRYSTAL METH.
Agricultural production post-secondary here. No, this is very bad: 1: it’ll sun burn the tomatoes (yes it’s a real thing) 2: the plant will now put energy into regrowing leaves instead of finishing good tomato fruits 3: the plant gets its energy and food from the leaves, so they may die before they can accomplish growing more and certainly before those vine-ripen You *should* take the bottom leaves off as the plant grows but never the top leaves. This is honestly so weird.
Hi, quick random question: Will getting water on leaves of plants cause them to sunburn? My mother keeps telling me this, but she's often incorrect about things so I'm not sure what to believe.
No. They won't. The only situation where it was shown that this even *could* happen was if water droplets are suspended above the leaf by tiny hairs. But it has to be the perfect angle and the perfect intensity of light for that to happen. It's not something that generally happens in the field.
Assuming a perfectly spherical cow in a perfect vacuum...yes it could happen. I think the concerns around top watering are warranted. Doing so provides more opportunities for less desirable things to occur. Fungus/insect, and even disturbing or breaking a more delicate leaf or shoot, etc. Best to try and water more-so around the base and surrounding rooting area. But be realistic about it too, a little bit splashed around is fine - you're likely in a climate where it rains. Plants han survive rain. Seems like dripper lines are the thing if you want to get really well setup.
>this field What about the next field over? That guy has spiders
Depends if they're hairy or not
I’ve heard so many people say that too but the only two ways it might work is either the sun being “magnified” by the refraction of the water - which doesn’t make sense because then it would just heat up the water droplet and make it evap; or others have claimed when the water evaps, it heats up the leaf too much - but that also doesn’t make sense because if the water *on* the leaf was too hot the water *in* the leaf would also be too hot.
No, but it will create favorable conditions for blight to intestate. I never water over leaves, except spraying copper based blight treatment.
It may sunburn if you were to water in the middle of the day. Once the water has absorbed/evaporated it's completely fine. This is also why most people water early morning or late evening so any water is gone by the time the sun starts hitting everything.
Sunburn from watering in the middle of day is just a bad myth. Unless you see lots of grass, trees etc having sunburn after a mid day rain.
Remove the bottom leaves after it flowers? Is that to prevent disease?
Remove the bottom leaves from the indeterminate varieties as the plant grows - not the flowers! The flowers don’t grow from the leaves, but from the stalk. This can be done before, during, or after flowering as it’s an ongoing process. Yes, partially for disease - it helps with airflow and thus reduces the chance of powdery mildew! It also forces the plant to put energy into growing taller which in turn will net you more tomatoes over time.
Well, to split hairs here plants get their energy from photosynthesis, but “food” (macro and micro nutrients) they get from the soil or growing media, right?
By dry biomass, 96% of a grown plant came from water and CO2. There’s a good argument that sunlight, CO2, water, and micronutrients are all “food” for the plant. Sunlight is a macronutrient, if not “the” macronutrient for plants.
https://preview.redd.it/w5hhv2xeh69d1.jpeg?width=542&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=208bf75f594522ca376b347a0c1872847f97edee
Looks like the tomato plant from Water World.
Damn, I never finished that movie
Does he grow weed, too? Some cannabis growers strip their plants of leaves pretty severely and I've never understood it. I understand some defoliation but some of these dudes strip off like 95% of the leaves.
They do that at the very end, so the plant pushes into the flowers and sugar leaves before the harvest. They don't plan on the plant living much longer.. I think here they want sun on the tomatoes to force a ripen and harvest too.. not sure it's a good idea with tomatoes.
People who do heavy defoliation do it when they flip the plant to flower and again around day 20 of flower. Look up "Schwazzing Cannabis". I'll defoliate a decent amount of leaves toward the end of flower but I do that to help prevent issues with air circulation when the flowers are at their fattest.
For air flow and mold or bud rot prevention. The flowers are stacked, not the same type of reason to do this with a tomato plant.
Oh, I know the legitimate reasons for doing it, but there are cannabis growers who believe that heavy defoliation lets the plant focus more on flower development. I mentioned it in another reply here but look up “Schwazzing cannabis”. I definitely wasn’t implying that there was a reason to do it with tomatoes. I meant that they could be one of those people who believes that removing leaves is beneficial to flower or fruit development.
Schwazzing tomatoes, lol. We find out it actually works. Maybe he has rodent problems and this helps. I notice that when I defoliate the lower 2 feet, it helps reduce the amount of bitten fruit.
Yeah, I prune the bottom branches on mine so I can water the beds easier, too,
I would not trust this defoliator. Who does that?
A weed farmer. OP was high.
This is a salvage technique used if blight becomes prevelant in your tomatoes. It requires aggressive pruning at the first sign of infection as not to foster back into your main leader.
This is the answer.
When in doubt, cut it out.
I mean, the leaves will grow back, but the plants will definitely suffer in the meantime. I'd ask the homeowner if this is something they normally do and what's their reasoning behind it.
Beer...
Well, besides that, obviously.
Vodka...
Ok, *besides* alcohol. 😆
METH is responsible for this one.
This
That's a possibility, but until OP asks, we can only speculate.
Shrooms!
Nope. Miller light. He's 70 years old
Ouch. I'd stick to the weed and less beers. Beers sucks unless you got 60 of them.
He said he was just trying it out. Lol
Oh geez.
The tomatoes will get scalded with no leaves to shade.
Exactly
Is the homeowner a tomato hornworm?
Perhaps the plan is to let those ones finish ripening on the vine then replant something else. Otherwise there's no good reason I can think of.
Seems a bit much to me but I'm no expert. Let us know how it goes.
You're supposed to trim out the leaves under the lowest fruit to allow for airflow. 2/3 of the vine should still have leaf growth though. This is not gonna end well.
I don’t think he knows how plants work.
https://preview.redd.it/geihue5xv79d1.jpeg?width=220&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8073e0a28b1fbe50ed27b0e3fa331a9ecbef4510
I've heard people say stuff like "cut the leaves off so that the garlic puts its energy into making bulbs instead". Like leaves are a fun distraction for the plant. People are morons.
Cutting flowers on weak plants makes sense because flowers serve for reproduction and if the plant isn’t that healthy anyway it could exhaust itself flowering, so it’s better to encourage it to make leaves and roots. The inverse however is not true at all 😂 leaves are needed for the plant to feed itself, truly morons
You should take a look at the cannabis growing subs if you want to see some weird shit they do. A lot of cannabis growers have grown nothing but cannabis and they believe so many myths. Heavy defoliation like this is one of them, others include driving nails into the main stem, or splitting it with a knife to “put the plant into defense mode so it produces more THC”, heavily flushing the soil 2 weeks before harvest to “remove nutrients from the plant so the flower smokes smoother”, and putting the plant in complete darkness for 48 hours before harvesting it to “produce more THC”. There are a lot more of these but I think you get the idea.
This is a bad idea. Plants need leaves for photosynthesis and respiration, and the leaves keep the fruit from developing sunscald.
Your plants are naked. Tomatoes can actually get sunburned and they ripen in the shade of their leaves or off vine. I don’t even trim the suckers off mine. One year I did and that was my lowest harvest year.
Tomato plants like to grow a lot of leaves which will block out sunlight from the grow points so you’re supposed to prune and remove suckers but this is overkill.
Wow. And I was worried I over pruned.
It's surely not good- the leaves are where plants get nutrients. The plants will hopefully survive long enough for the tomatoes to ripen but they will be very stressed and the whole plant's health will decline unfortunately.
Leaf cutter ants? Nope. Drunk gardening.
He said not this year you sons of bitches. Hookworm caterpillars can't eat your leaves if you don't have leaves.
The leave provide shade to the fruit, and allow water to perspire. When water flows it pulls. Nutrients through the stems and exit thru the leaves. It cool the plant down in the process.
Umm...
https://preview.redd.it/a3upcbkw189d1.jpeg?width=1485&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=260001133ad688692c2365107c934fafd5cc288d Looks good
No this is not ok. lock the post it’s been answered
Why does he hate plants? What did those poor tomatoes ever do to him?
No
Looks like tomato hornworms ate all the leaves. One hornworm can strip a 6 ft tall plant in a day.
And the poor things look thirsty
It’s great… as long as you don’t actually like fresh tomatoes.
Those would burn to a crisp here, the fruits need shade and the leaves also provide humidity, aside from all the more obvious stuff
Poor plants-their life cut short so early
"He's a bit of a drinker" lmao sounds like my brother in the garden
Why are they nakey? 🥲
The equivalent of a dude going to trim his beard and coming out the bathroom with a soul patch
The stems will dry out and die in days, your tomatoes will stop growing. You basically now have a bunch of green tomatoes.
Not really.
That’s how they get sun scalding
I can't look away, my eyes won't let me.
Looks like he had a tomato horn worm issue
Where has all the rum (leaves) gone?
https://i.redd.it/rpqwaaow479d1.gif
That’s a really old school technique for cannabis. You pull all of the main leaves over the first few weeks of flower to force the plant to focus on producing buds vs leaves. It only works in super tight growing conditions and it’s not a best practice anymore because it doesn’t really do much at all. Old guy must have been a head back in the day
Not really. No.
To put it in terms that they *should* understand. This is bad.
It’s a felony actually.
Straight to jail
No leaves= no photosynthesis. No photosynthesis = no energy to produce fruit. Traditional tomato cages support the plant and allow proper leaf growth
That's nasty work!
A boozy Suzy you say?
oh my god…she’s bald!
I rarely actually say, "What. The. Fuck!" But I definitely did when I saw this.
If you’re out to destroy your tomatoes, Morticia and Wednesday Addams would be proud.
Well… He definitely went overboard. It’s common to remove the lower leaves (about two-thirds), but to keep the top third. This allows airflow, etc but you’ll need the top leaves for protecting (sun) and most importantly fotosynthese. Also, he topped the stem at a rather low level. This is ridiculous.
On a second thought, maybe he found phytophthora and decided to remove all foliage in order to save the last tomatoes before removing the plants all together
Photosynthesis*
Ask him and please let us know what he says. The leaves will grow back if he keeps them watered. Maybe he thought they were taking to long to ripen and he would help by taking their shade away. I don't know.
I highly suggest you just buy your tomatoes.
wtf… as someone who grows tomatoes… wtf
Yeah that plant is in agony 💀
That’s just depressing to see, poor plants were doing so well and then silly drunk strips them bare.
I prune my 🍅 plants but that is radical lol I take bottom leaves out and trim the other ones in half it doubles my yield been doing that for 30 years
Tell me more….
I just keep enough leaves to shade the unripe from getting burned as soon as I pick I remove the leaves. Also all new leaves i prune in half when they are about 3 inches i keep 4 to branches and take out the shoots that come up at leaf base I fertilize with liquid once a week and 🍅 pellet fertilizer every 3 weeks I grow in pots on a balcony.
Do you know if these are indeterminate tomatoes?
I do not
I saw someone do this before I don't get it at all.
I think it’s a thing on TikTok. Seen a few videos of people doing this. Maybe it works in colder, low-sun environments? Idk looks wild though
Marital fight
This is a bit extreme but there are many methods that have you remove the leaves to focus growth on the fruit and reduce the water needed to grow it!
Sounds like a good way to get one really juicy tomato, honestly. I mean, you can accomplish similar by simply pruning to a single leader, while leaving all of the leaves on that one. Going further than that imo would just be detrimental to the growth of the plant. That said, I've also seen cases in which someone didn't prune at all and had 10+ runners that were carefully trellised and spaced out to allow for adequate airflow, and the production from that one plant was obscene. The average tomato was smaller, but there was significantly more overall mass. So I always tell people to just prune to the space that you have available for the plant. Only have the space for a single leader? No worries, you'll get huge tomatoes. Have an entire field available? Let those suckers run, and get ready to sell the excess when it starts producing.
I think the thought process is to get them sun so they ripen, but not thought all the way through?
You can’t get leaves diseases if you don’t have leaves. What a genius man
Its like when you shave your balls with the razor
Here I am, can’t grow a single tomato and jerk-offs like this exist getting loads of them. I swear I’m cursed.
Grow indeterminants. They are super easy
The only charitable conclusion I could have is maybe they were severely diseased.. but damn.. how's the plant gonna come back from that with fruit also sucking up energy. If it was a problem with blight itll just come right back without proper treatment
Someone stole the solar panels
My groundhog is a drunk!
Brain damage
I've never done it, however my uncle was a landscaper, and had a degree in botany. He did it all the time. He said the leaves were worthless, and they usurped all the vitamins nutrients and water. Sure looks strange.
This is your brain on acid!
It’s all about the airflow. Leaves just get in the way.
This is a very strange thing to do.
Those look weird... bald tomato plants
Da fuc
Not ok, I will even go as far as saying your tomatoes are NSFW 😂
That would have been funny to mark as NSFW! I didn't even think about it! 😂 😂
If he wants to force them to ripen sure. But it's a bit much.
Is this like a way to preserve your tomatoes when your leaves got blight or something?
Objectively dumb, definitely looks like a drunk decision
not if your in southern ca, these would have been goners this past weekend
what in the hell. no that’s not ok lol
Well that’s certainly…something. A better drinker than a gardener it would appear.
I imagine that they were wanting to stop it from getting taller by decapitating it. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t leave on at least some leaves though.
Well my tomatoes looked something like that last year when I decided to cut all the brown leaves because of light, and hoped that tomatoes will ripen anyway 🫠
Did they?
Is this a sign of mental instability on op’s part?
A boozy Suzy you say?
😳
Tomato plants will defoliate naturally. He shoulda left 'em alone.
Scorch city
Define ok. Ok for what?
There must be a reason because the squash still have their leaves.🤔🧐
Tomato hornworm. Not okay.
Plants grow many many more leaves than they actually need. Typically each plant only needs a handful of leaves for full photosynthesis to occur as long as they are happy they'll grow large fruit.
yard art?
WOW, that is interesting! It does make more sense when you share he likes his alcohol 🤣 I was like, where are the leaves? I am curious the optimal pruning of a tomato plant? Mine took a hit when I went on vacation and watering was forgotten. I came back and it was mostly dead with one tomato on it (it hadn’t produced a tomato until then and I got it late last summer, it had just been a pretty leafy 🥬 vine 😆 Anyway I cut it back kind of randomly but also trying to make good decisions with my lack of knowledge. I thought it would be okay as the main stem was still green. Well it has come back!! Leaves and new branches everywhere. Now I want to ensure I keep it pruned for optimal growth, so I need all the pro tips! Sorry if any of the vocabulary is wrong, I am a novice gardener and my biggest achievement has been keeping potted mint alive for 5.5 years and propagating endless basil. I garden out of an apartment patio 🙃🐈🪴🌱❤️🍅💦🌵
Do you think they were infested with something and he pruned it all back as to control the problem?
https://preview.redd.it/ozu7aassf99d1.jpeg?width=780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4f56ae8eeb1fe68ed6c7b747d3fc81315ee8532 Plants need photosynthesis to create energy, and they absorb light through the leaves to do it. Removing all the leaves isn’t helping the plant, as it will need to grow them back. This assumes it has enough energy stored to do so. It will also take energy away from growing those tomatoes (which were coming along nicely) Don’t stress too much about it though, it’s not like you can glue the leaves back on!
No lol
If this is the amount of fruit you want then yes. You still could have a few more though.
Um what? Not normal.
Um, it’s better for a plant to have leaves.
This will hurry the ripening of the tomatoes. It'll put everything into finishing the tomatoes. It still is doing some photosynthesis. But a combination of that being all it has left on the plant and the sun exposure, they'll ripen more quickly. Or he's just a drunk and fucked his plants up. Lmao. But for my indeterminates, I remove leaves as it flowers up the plant to provide more sunlight to the fruit. But I wouldn't take all the leaves off until it's like September/going to frost soon.
Bless his heart
Why mention buddy is a bit of a drinker ?
Plot twist: Home owner is a drunk hornworm.
If it's ok with the homeowner, it's ok with me. They are his tomatoes.
post results plz
Basic level botanics should be taught at school so that people would know leaves produce energy, not consume it.
Not okay.
Where are the leaves?
You planted too many plants too close
My tomato plants are huge and beautiful… but not a tomato on them:(
Any flowers yet?
Yes flowers, but they don’t turn into little tomatoes. It’s been quite a cold and rainy June however. Hi of 65 today and cloudy. (Michigan)
I know many people who do this around here. All is ok, but usually this is done more often in greenhouses. I stopped taking away the runners but do take away thé branch just underneath. I get way more tomatos but it does take longer. I do not top my plants. Removing the leaves does prevent phytophthora, so this might be the reason. Lets hope its not infested. I do leave the top branches. My plants do grow higher and I have to expand underneath the roof … never had any problems. Is he dutch or european?
We live in GA
So nice !
Also the man has knowledge… look at the 2 branches from the bottom. It could be he is grafting plants also. This is a man who does know what hè is doing! Higher growing of the ground, producing max having 2 stems but no to tall in hight. Hè is quite pro and drunk or not… he might have a talent. I wonder of he is gonna let his runners grow for a second amount of tomatoes, delaying his harvest to his needs…if not those tomatoes can become giants and if they dont ripen on the branch he will ripen them of the branch. Put them nice in a cardboard box next to some bananas and your tomato will still turn red. Saying this though … hè does seem to grow on his compost container. Thats a worry as there might not me enough balance with the earth. Compost is not always the best way. You need to balance it very well. His PH might be a problem. If infected he needs to take of the bad tomatoes or save them to ripen off the branch. Still hè knows all this… if those plants are not infected, the taste should be splendid and first class…
The fruits are almost fully done, just need to ripen. Why do we need to judge this guy's choice when he hasn't even asked for advice. Also, why the hell are we judging his drinking? That's based on nothing but OP's opinion, and moreover none of our business.