Whether to pinch the suckers in the leaf axils of your tomato plants depends on how the plants are being trained. If you are staking your tomato plants and want to train them to a single stem that you can tie to a support, then you would want to pinch out the sucker to reduce the plant load. If you are growing your tomatoes in cages or allowing them to sprawl on the ground, there is no need nor advantage to removing these suckers. The extra foliage can provide protection to the fruit and help prevent sunscald.
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Should I prune the sucker stems that grow off the main stalk of my tomato plants?
Last Updated: November 07, 2011
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