Pacific Northwest Gardening: Pruning tomato plants?, 1 by Rarejem

Rarejem wrote:
I am still really trying to play catch up on the forum, but Mom told me that I had to post a picture of my tomato pruning experiment in EWA. Don and I went over at the beginning of October for our birthdays, and harvested all of the fruit that was even showing orange at that time because you never know when the first hard frost will hit on the east side. Our plants get incredibly unruly over there due to a combination of excellent growing conditions and our minimal opportunities to tend to them. I decided to cut back half of the garden at the beginning of October (biggest reason was to make them easier to pick) but leave the other half the way that they were. My question was, does cutting off the leaves and exposing the remaining fruit to the sunlight during the day help ripen them better, or are the plants better off with the leaves to insulate the fruit through the chilly nights? This is what the plants looked like before harvest at the first of October.....