What advice to take? Not?

In the past few days, I've run across these ideas:

"clubbing" onion plants after they fall to get bigger roots (pushing them down in the soil)

Pulling the leaves off tomato plants below the fruit.

Spraying tomato plants with a mixture of aspirin and water.

I've never heard of any of these. Anyone do them? I've got shallots starting to fall out there. My tomatoes are producing flowers but not much fruit, so I'm looking for ideas that will help me get more.

Comments welcome!

When it comes to trying new gardening advise, my policy is to go halves.

Take the leaves off the tomatoes.   Okay.  I will do that with half of my tomato plants and see which half does best.  Got a new way to plant onions.  Okay.  I will try half that way and half the old way.

All this gardening advise is for specific locations, specific soil, specific climates.  Not one of them is universal.   So it makes sense to produce our own experiments and see what works at our location, our soil, our specific climate.

Most of the time, the more effort a solution requires, the less it works in our garden,  

Totally agree with experimentation, i.e. doing half. That way you can compare and see what works. Also, if you have tried something similar before and it didn't work, I would skip it altogether. Another time not to try is when some process is already going really well

Funny you mention taking leaves off tomato plants below the fruit ...I just heard that one the other day.  

The video I watched also stated that tomato fruits won't grow (or even ripen) in hot weather and may not set new flowers either. Apparently, the ideal temps for growing tomatoes were low 80s to high 70s.
The advice seemed counter-intuitive to me, as I always hear about "hot-house" tomatoes, but my experience with the hot weather this year seemed to confirm this.  They advised picking the large unripened tomatoes and putting them in a paper bag indoors to ripen them, so I'm giving that a shot.

In our climate, depending on n the variety of tomatoes, taking the leaves off as it grows works. Moisture on the leaves can encouraged blight (here).  We don't get rain here in the summer, so the only moisture is from dew (near the ground) and the hose (near the ground).  

But different varieties have different needs and risks.  My locally adapted cherry tomato grows as a large bush and shows no problem with leaves getting wet, so it's just wasted energy to do it with them.

Each variety has different temperatures that they thrive in so we try to get some tomatoes from different ranges as we never know how hot or cold our summer will be.  

If there is one advise I feel is neigh universal, it's to aim for variety in n the garden.

Jennie said,  My tomatoes are producing flowers but not much fruit, so I'm looking for ideas that will help me get more.

Tomatoes with too many flowers and not much fruit could be getting the wrong nutrients or maybe there are not enough pollinators so the tomatoes need to be hand pollinated.

Maybe too much nitrogen, phosphorus, or potassium is causing more flowers than fruit.

Maybe the tomato plants need more calcium, magnesium, or sulfur.

Have there been any soil tests recently?

Plenty of sunlight and water?

I have trouble with flowers/no fruit set and I've found it goes with really hot dry days - the pollen dries before the fertilisation takes place, same problem with beans.  In a "hot house" the humidity is controlled so the dry-out doesn't happen. Beats me how they manage tomato plants that reach the 'roof' too.
Whole-heartedly support the try it and see approach on half the plants. never mind the do or not do - there's always try

I don't know about pulling leaves below tomatoes. Maybe?

However, on a related note there are determinate and indeterminate tomato plants. The indeterminate ones keep growing (and producing) so we prefer those. But at the end of summer we snip off the new growth shoots to force the plant to finish the fruit that's already set.

Anne Miller wrote:

Jennie said,  My tomatoes are producing flowers but not much fruit, so I'm looking for ideas that will help me get more.

Tomatoes with too many flowers and not much fruit could be getting the wrong nutrients or maybe there are not enough pollinators so the tomatoes need to be hand pollinated.

Maybe too much nitrogen, phosphorus, or potassium is causing more flowers than fruit.

Maybe the tomato plants need more calcium, magnesium, or sulfur.

Have there been any soil tests recently?

Plenty of sunlight and water?

I had this problem about four years ago.  The soil around my house is horrible on nutrients.  Bad rainstorms wash everything away due to a slope.  I never thought to hand pollinate the plants.  If I have the chance to grow some again, I will do this.