Many summer residents trim the leaves of tomatoes in order to improve their fruiting and also to protect them from late blight.
However, mistakes in this process – such as removing leaves too early or removing too many leaves – lead to a small tomato harvest.
For this reason, pruning tomatoes should be carried out in accordance with certain rules.
So, as soon as the seedlings planted in the ground have grown a good green mass, it is worth removing the bottom 3 leaves from the plants.
This should not be done all at once, but with breaks of 3-4 days – this way the plant will be protected from stress.
Leaves around the first flower cluster (3 on top and 3 on the bottom) should not be touched. You can start removing them when the fruits set and the first tomato starts to ripen.
In this case, you also cannot remove all the healthy green leaves at once, so that the moisture from the roots does not flow to the fruits and they do not crack.
When all the tomatoes on the first brush have ripened, you can begin to gradually remove the leaves towards the second and so on, right up to the end of the stem.
