This old chestnut keeps resurfacing: here is misleading advice from Marshalls seeds which just landed in my inbox:
“Now is the time to be harvesting your tomatoes and other fruiting vegetables like squashes, aubergines and beans. If you want them to ripen quicker, expose the fruits to the sun more by removing leaves that are covering or hiding the fruit.”
In fact, the only positive effect of removing leaves will be that fruit colour some more, and that is not even useful for aubergines and beans. Plants need leaves to photosynthesise and send energy for ripening and flavour to remaining fruits. Save yourselves a job and remove only lower leaves of tomato plants, leave all leaves above remaining fruit.
Next nonsense:
“Digging the spent stems and leaves of leguminous plants into the soil can really improve the soil texture. Not only do the green stems encourage decomposers in the soil like worms to break up the soil, the roots introduce nitrates nitrogen for future crops to take up.”
In fact, any remaining nitrogen nodules (often less than 10% because bean/pea plants use most of them to grow) will add their goodness to soil without any digging needed. Worms can deal with any debris left on the surface and will appreciate not being disturbed or even killed by digging! Statements like this make no sense and I suggest you don’t believe everything you read – common sense is useful in spotting misleading ‘advice’ of this kind, and there is a lot around!
