What are some good resources that explain tomato pruning with lots of data?
You all know how it is with boomers sometimes.... I am growing some tomato starts for myself this year, and had a ton of extras, so offered them to my mother and other relatives. I thought I had made progress with my mom in explaining that no, she doesn't need to snip every single sucker on an indeterminate, and she shouldn't prune determinates or dwarfs at all. Sent her youtube videos illustrating. Asked her to do her own research to confirm (what a pipe dream that was).
Up until recently, she was on board. Then she goes into a random garden center and talks to a fellow boomer. The other boomer explains that she uses a single stake with all of her tomatoes and prunes most of the LEAVES off her tomato plants for some bizarre, boomer reason. Yes, the leaves, not even talking about suckers. Leaves. Now my mom will apparently be pruning potentially 60% of the leaves off her tomato plants for some insane reason. By the way, I have a degree in botany, but apparently explaining how plants need their leaves for energy means nothing in the face of some random boomer in a garden center who swears by the "trimming loads of leaves off the plant method."
While I am giving the plants in good faith and don't intend to meddle with someone else's plants that they will spend months nurturing, it just seems so wrong to let this happen. Many of these are cherry tomatoes, and there's zero reason to trim anything on them. Please help me prevent a potential massacre. Does anyone have a good resource I can share with her on pruning tomatoes?