I do sometimes on peppers but not on tomatoes.

The link to your question doesn't work. It is apparently a private question that only you have access to.

Removing flowers is not something that is necessary for the most part. The only time I ever do it is if something starts to flower before I transplant it into the garden, and this happens rarely. Once the plant is in the garden it is left to do its thing.

Rodney

It depends of course on the vegetable. Those that are grown for their greens generally do benefit from having any flowers cut off, as that means they are bolting or trying to set seed and that will usually alter taste. Tomatoes, peppers or eggplants and similar plants, I never bother and have not ever seen it affect their growth one way or the other.

I can't think of many other types of veggies that will produce flowers earlier than they should or not at the proper stage of maturity.

Thank you.

I did it this week to all my tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. Most of them look too small to even hold up one fruit that the several fruits it looked it would grow would be too much. Thats part of what made me cut the flowers. From now on I will try to leave them alone and see what happens.

With very young transplants the plant will usually abort the earliest blossoms especially on larger fruiting plants. Cherry or salad tomatoes and small fruited peppers like Jalapeno are exceptions I have seen most often.

Thats interesting. Why does it try to flower if it will only drop the flowers?

I usually just leave any early flowers on the plants also.

Many plants will flower early because of some external stress- like transplanting. Like Jack said, the plant's sole purpose in life is to reproduce and if it is stressed it may make a "desperate" attempt to reproduce.

Here's a technical paper on the subject: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115168/

I can't say for certain, but the flower dropping might be related to the plant becoming acclimated to the stressful conditions and the genes that triggered the flowering get shut down- so that the plant can divert that energy to growing. I'll have to see if I can find a scientific explanation of that.

My thought process was the same. The plant is starting to flower to produce seeds as a reaction to something. Cutting off the flowers early on would 'help' it forget about flowering so quickly and focus on long term growth as it has settled into its new home.

When I see stores/vendors selling a tomato or something in a small pot that already has produced a tomato I always stay clear of them for this reason that the plant is stressed in the small space.

I seem to recall mention of a "master" or "king" flower on peppers, that some say to rmove . Sometimes I think of that reference, but not often. I'm going to check it out, since this year I have room to experiment.

These seem to be California references.

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/remove-first-set-buds-pepper-plants-99863.html

/how-to-grow-perfect-peppers/https://www.therustedgarden.com/blogs/vegetable-gardening-tips-blog/how-to-the-benefits-of-topping-off-or-pruning-pepper-plants-several-video-examples-with-control-plant

I found an old reference that said ""The organic salad garden" by Joy Larkcom "A small "king " pepper may develop early low down on the main stem inhibiting further production. Remove it either at the flower bud or young fruit stage".

Tomato plants will freely drop blossoms if conditions aren't right for growing fruit or if the first flowers are malformed in some way, so I just leave them alone to sort it out.

I just transplanted my seedlings 2 weeks ago and my squash and some cucumbers are already starting to flower. I’m also trying to figure out if I should cut the flowers off too because the plant isn’t even close to strong enough to hold the weight of the fruit?

I decided its not worth it to do. I think if the plant isn't in shock it would know when and how to grow its fruit .Towards the end of the growing season I cut off flowers that I know are setting too late and won't give me an edible plant so the ones growing can get all the attention.

I cut off the first flower bud with pepper plants when I plant them, with the idea that the plant will grow bigger since it is in the ground instead of growing "fruit". In the long run I don't know it it matters, but I do get big plants. That first pepper can get stuck in the angle between the branch and the stem. If I bought a stressed out plant that was the only way I could get that variety, I would cut off the flowers and hope it recovers faster.

One way to look at it is that the purpose of plants is to make fruits, which make seeds. That is, they want to do what you want to do. Evolutionary forces will tend to make them evolve to maximize natural fruit production. In that sense, if they're ready to produce maximal fruit by popping out flowers, why would we want to remove those flowers? Sorta seems like we're trying to second guess evolution by removing first buds. As if to say no, plants, you really shouldn't be doing that!