A baby never learns to walk if you don't let go of its hand; if you don't let it fall down now and then.

So Handy Rule: let the plant do its own blossom removal as it sees fit ! ;-)

Seriously, nothing is gained and potential production is lost.

Dave

Thanks. I figured it would be something like that. The plant is trying to produce as many seeds as possible (which corresponds to as many fruits as possible). It ought to know how to do that. That's what I want as well.

Yea, I never pinch blossoms.......way too impatient for the first tomato :-)

That tomato plant is going to grow to a healthy, good sized plant no matter if you pick the flowers of or not, so why discard the years first truss?

I think that's the question. If tomatoes start fruiting when they're immature, then maybe the plant won't grow to a healthy good sized plant. The issue is whether you want the young plant to concentrate it's energy on fruit or on growing foliage that could support more fruit.

If the goal was earliest tomatoes, then sure, don't pick off the first flowers. If the goal is large quantity of fruit from the plant, it's not so clear.

I guess this is related to the idea that you trim mature tomato plants to encourage fruiting, rather than foliage production. (That is not a widely accepted idea, however.) The idea is that energy that goes into foliage production doesn't go in to fruiting. The converse of that would be where energy that goes into fruit production in an immature plant doesn't go into foliage production.