thanks you Mel

Tomatoes can grow in odd ways, sometimes what looks like a sucker, is really a new shoot off of the main stalk. I'd wait until they're about 12-16" tall. That's when suckers seem to start showing up.

So there is no need to remove them that relates to the health of the plant. Rather it depends on the plant spacing and the method of support used for them.

Pruning/removing lateral branches is strictly optional and will reduce the production of the plant.

The plant in your blue cup is somewhat malformed and the primary growth tip has stunted. That stem second from the left will become your primary stem now. The third stem from the left is just a leaf branch and will replace the damaged one that is on the far right.

Dave

It is a matter of your own cost and benefit analysis. My own decision is not to prune.

You have plenty of time to decide what you want to do. I would not just take one opinion.
Your plants need to be much healthier to even consider it. Let them get comfortable in their growing spot, get accustomed to their growing conditions a few weeks.
I do prune some and not others. I like the leaves off the ground. Even with straw mulch.
I prune a bit early, around the two foot age. Let it go for a while and randomly decide depending on my season any given year. (cold climate, altitude, short season)
If growth is slow, i let them go. June can be cold and wet or hot and dry.

Your location, if you plan to use a cage or trellis system, strong supports?, lots or room or small area...healthy soil....

Many sites claim it must be done - not just a few "suckers" but all suckers must be removed. Some that you have to do it or the plant will die from lack of nourishment which is amazing since 1000s of plants are grown without any pruning every year. Some claim that you cannot grow tomatoes without doing it. Some even go so far as to claim that you will get much more production from a single stem plant. One source even claims that you must remove all leaves and branches from the plant except for the very top cluster of leaves.

There are almost an unlimited number of previous discussions here about the pro and cons of pruning with many opinions offered. But the one thing they all have in common is that it isn't mandatory and that it depends on your goals and the circumstances. :)

Dave

I nipped them (except the ones I missed) when my plants were small, wanting to get them up into the light in my shaded patio. When they got to about 4' I said "go crazy guys."

Strictly for what it's worth, and inline with "spacing" comments above, in my narrow space I might go for more varieties of smaller plants next year. That would mean removing suckers (in common usage of the term) to keep plants narrow. For me, a narrow Sungold next to a narrow Sweet100, is better than making a choice, one or the other.

ARE THEY SUCKERS?
I personally prefer not to use the name "Sucker". It has a bad connotation, in my opinion, which has nothing to do with if someone wants to remove them or not.

Branching have different forms. Example my 20" RC ML has a "V" branching. Then at the lower nodes I noticed several smaller growths. The latter is different from the former. I don't want those 3 or 4 tiny growths become branches, b'c the top "V" branches each has buds and I give priority to those.

It is also important to know the timeline on new branches. Lets say that we are into 3rd month of our growing season and have about 70 more days left till the end of season. Now we see new growth/branch appearing. Let us just do a simple math here:

It has been studied that from flower to ripe fruit it take 40 to 60 days (depending on variety and fruit size). Let us take 50 days as an average for the sake of simplicity in this example. Now how long more it will take for this new growth/branch to produce flowers ? lets be optimistic that it will take about 30 days. Then it will take another 50 days on top of that (from flower to ripe fruit). So then in the most optimist estimate that new growth/branch will require about 80 days to produce any ripe fruit. Well, we have only 70 more days to go,( Take or leave a week or two.) PLUS in late season both growth and ripening should slow down considerably. SIMPLE MATH !
So even according to the most optimistic view on NOT PRUNING any new growth after certain time line is not going to make any contribution, as far as we, the grower, are concerned. So in this case those branches will just suck up some of the plants energy without being able to pay it back. In this example we did not take into account the amount of energy that the plant takes away from growing fruits to growing branches. According to layman's version of the law of Thermodynamics:
YOU CANNOT GET SOMETHING FOR NOTHING.

OTHER PRUNING CONSIDERATIONs.
Aside from the "SUCKER" issue, there are different growing styles:

-- Caging with ample spacing
-- staking, stringing with tight spacing like greenhouse market /commercial growing.
--- "per square foot" land resource and productivity considerations.
--- Container growing

In the final analysis, either method is optional at best and one can choose whichever she/he wants.