you either need to try to separate them or "off" all but the bigggest/strongest one, or the plants will fight each other.

Everyone has their own method for separating..I like to dunk them in a bowl of water and try to wash away the dirt - once the dirt is gone, the roots disentangle. When yo plant them, take off some of the side leaves and plant them much deeper than they were. This way, if you damaged the roots, the stems will put out new roots.

Even if you completely remove the roots the stem should be able to send out roots to keep the plant alive, so it's not a terribly risky venture to try to split them - and you get bonus plants that way!!

Thanks Kterlep, you probably saved me some misery. I planned on planting them as they came unless I heard otherwise.
Would simply cutting off the extras work OK also ?

Don't be so quick to seperate those plants. I've already grown 2 together with good results. You will probably get different opinions on this but I think it depends on how big the hole is you are going to plant them in, what variety they are, weather conditions, etc. Why not try one or two to see what happens then report back at the end of the season?

Yup you can pinch them or carefully use scissors to cut them off at the soil level. Make sure you plant the plant deeper anyway, both for good root development and to make sure the off'd plants don't send up new shoots...

Leaving them is fine for an experiment(as long as you are growing more tomatoes than you can use)... experiments are always fun and great learning experiments.

Ill be the bad seed again and tell you about what i do with matts wild cherry every summer and its fabulous. I but put 4 plants into a halved whiskey barrel, filled with soil. The plants litterally grow up my front door, over the awning, and halfway down the other side, and is ALWAYS covered in fruit. I trellis it with string, and water it about 2-3 times a day. It never, ever has given me a problem, and is happy as can be. SO it can be done, and if your willing to experiment, you can do anything. Its your garden! =cass

Thanks Folks;
These plants are in Early Girl & Lemon Boy..make a difference ?

Will it make a difference? Yes, Matts Wild Cherry and similar currant-type tomatoes are monster weeds. Under the best conditions you may have no trouble but you will have root competitions for nutrients and water so in the heat of the summer when there might be barely enough water to keep one plant going strong, both will suffer and be stunted.

If they are large enough (8"-10") you can cut off the extra plants, put them in some water or wet potting mix and they will reroot then you can plant them later.

Thats why you take care of them and give them what they need. Like I said, its just me.. The bigger plants I would only do one or two at most into a whiskey barrel. -cass

I plant them together. Once they grow up I can't tell the difference between the plants with two in a hole and the single plants.

The sun and nutrients in that same space is the determining factor. You would likely find the total yield in that same space will be the same with one or two plants.

Zeuspaul