they probably won't amount to much if you leave them since the plant is not mature. you can remove them since you just transplanted and it's still very early where the plant can focus on growth first. after the plant has doubled/triple in size you can stop removing them. determinate plants will grow to a certain size, typically produce most of the fruit all once and ripen around the same time. because the plants don't continue to grow after producing, you want to avoid pruning when the plant is young.

I don't remove the first flowers. And, no it hasn't stopped growing. It will get much bigger and produce lots of tomatoes. Enjoy.

...and remove perfectly good fruits hoping to develop? No way. Doubly no way bc these are small tomatoes and take little energy from the plant compared to beefsteaks. Tripley no way because they are determinates and nodes are limited...

The determinate does not stop growing when it begins to flower - where did you see that? Eventually all growing tips go blind. Find your growing tips (main and side) and count them and convince yourself your plant has a long way to go by observing active growing tip that aren't just a terminal flower cluster ... that's the growth habit..

And also notice how quickly you want to graduate to indeterminates and good you got the taller support!

Cheers

PC

Honestly, to me that looks like a pretty average height for flower buds to start coming in. Believe me, it will grow quite a bit before the buds actually open.

I never pinch flower buds off of my determinate varieties. I have done so before and they didn't produce as well. So, i'm speaking from experience. Also, determinate varieties tend to be short and stocky so they won't get nearly as large as an indeterminate variety. Your plant appears to be the right size for budding. It will continue to grow larger, but it will not be huge. Some I have to cage, others I do not. With a paste variety though, you will likely have to cage. But anyway, everything looks great. Nothing to worry about! :-)