[4th season allot]

I have grow tomatoes for a long time and not usually cut lower leaves off my plants, a friend has recently took over a plot elsewhere and has been advised to cut lower leaves off. Can any one advise the advantage of this recall hearing years ago it was to allow the sun to heat the soil but not sure why.
My own tomato plants lower leaves are looking a bit sorry for them selves so toying with removing some of them.

[mumofstig]

Don't remove any leaves until you have ripening fruit, and then only leaves below the lowest ripening truss.
Much too early to do it yet, I would think.

[jezza]

Hello if you decide to cut any leaves off the tomatoes make sure you have a good disinfectant to clean knife/secateurs  between each plant as disease is easily spread from plant to plant as we found out in 1996 when we lost 40.000 plants to an internal stem rot its quicker to snap the leaves off   jezza

[JayG]

I plant out my tomatoes deeper than they were in the original pots to encourage more root development, which does mean the lowest leaves are touching the soil and are prone to die off and rot, so I remove them to avoid potential problems with botrytis.

Apart from that, I do what Mum suggests, although I sometimes remove leaves jammed up against the greenhouse glass because they tend to trap moisture - another potential health issue to be avoided if possible, although obviously not applicable to toms grown outdoors.