Quote:
Originally Posted by b54red
I found through my own experimentation that removing at least the first pepper as soon as it appears will in the long run give you more fruit. If the plant is still very small and has set some peppers I will remove them also. I found that if you allow a small plant to produce a large pepper it will seriously stunt the plant for a long time and reduce overall production. My conclusion is that the small plant just uses too much energy that should go into growing larger to make that first or first few peppers and can't recover easily from the strain.
Bill
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dmforcier
Don't mistake correlation for causality. For some reason plants that are weak or under stress while very young will rush quickly to set some pods. The fact that it set a pod while small - and the others didn't - is a good indication that it has other problems.
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My 2 c's... I tend to agree with both observations. A plant under stress will indeed attempt to bloom & set fruit more quickly. Likewise, in my observation, a plant which is allowed to set a pepper while still small will be stunted, unless that pepper is removed. In both cases, removing all peppers & blooms allows the plant to put all of its energy into growth.
Wet weather often delays transplanting for me, as it did again this year. Some of the peppers will become pot bound, and bloom precociously in response. After transplanting, I pinch off any peppers which may have formed, as well as any buds. The plants generally re-enter the vegetative phase at that point, and do not bloom again until they are much larger. The final DTM of those plants tends to conform with their established norms.
Plants stop blooming (and usually stop growing) when the number of fruits set equals the maximum that the plant can support to maturity. The more blossoms or immature peppers are removed, the larger the plant will grow, and the more fruit that it can support... but there will be a corresponding delay in the DTM of ripe peppers. Provided the season is long enough, or the plants are given protection, removing the first peppers is a good strategy. Where peppers are a challenge, it might be best to let those first fruits set, and just use more plants to compensate for the reduced yield.
I'm assuming for the purpose of discussion that the end goal is to increase the production of
ripe peppers. If the peppers are intended for green use, then picking them as you need them should result in a continuous yield of peppers.