Should you take out the suckers from your tomato plants?

Answer 1

Suckers are usually located towards the bottom of the plant and generally don't have blossoms. There is not agreement among tomato gardeners about whether suckers should be cut off or not. Organic gardener Mike McGrath says if you cut green healthy leaves off a tomato, you are the sucker, because all foliage nourishes the plant and developing fruit through photosynthesis.

Answer 2

You can remove the sucker or the main branch or both, but the important thing is to remove almost all the branches and suckers from a blossoming mature plant to receive the best possible crop.

An indeterminate-type plant (no limit to plant height) that has reached a height of 6 or 8, or even 10 feet should be left with only 3 or 4 leafing branches, but do not remove the flowering or budding branches since these will produce the tomato fruits.

Determinate varieties ( the types that stop growing at 2 or 3 feet high) are often left unpruned since they are usually quite bushy and often produce large quantities of smaller tomatoes.

If you do not heavily prune indeterminate types, you will grow large quantities of great looking leaves, but very little fruit and of somewhat poor quality

Answer 3

cut them off, dont pull them or you will damage the mother plants root system

Answer 4

A sucker on a tomato plant is simply an extra stem that starts growing between the main stem and every leaf stem.