Don't Prune Your Peppers!
Vložit
- čas přidán 27. 06. 2024
- Finally, after 6 months, 72 plants, 4 raised beds, and 48 square feet of growing space, we can't finally put to rest whether or not every spring we should be pruning our pepper plants!
Previous Pepper Pruning Video: • Pruning Pepper Plants ...
3-Part Pepper Growing Guide For All Skill Levels:
Part 1 Seeding and Germination: • Growing Peppers Part 1...
Part 2 Growth and Establishment: • Growing Peppers Part 2...
Part 3 Planting Outdoors: • Growing Peppers Part 3...
2021 is the Year of the Garden! We deserve it after the last little while, and growing our own food and self sufficiency is just the reward we need to get back on track!
For more information on all your gardening questions, check out my other videos!:
Direct Seeding vs Starter Plant: • Direct Seeding Vs Star...
100% Germination?: • Seed Germination - 5 R...
Seed Starting Soil: • How To Make Your Own S...
Seed Starting 101, The Basics!: • How To Start Vegetable...
Starting Tomato Seeds: • How To Grow Tomatoes P...
Starting Pepper Seeds: • Growing Peppers Part 1...
Starting Cucumber Seeds: • Video
Starting Zucchini Seeds: • Growing Zucchini Part ...
Starting Corn Seeds: • Growing Corn - Part 1 ...
Starting Pumpkin Seeds: • How To Grow Pumpkins -...
DIY Ultimate Potting Mix: • Make Your Own Potting ...
If you're just starting out gardening in 2021, please check out my Amazon Affiliate links below to get the right tools for the job! It doesn't cost you a cent, but this channel receives a small incentive for any items purchase through Amazon. Happy Gardening!
Handy 12-piece Garden Tool Set!:
Amazon Canada: amzn.to/3jsNIyk
Amazon USA: amzn.to/2YZhFwx
Amazon UK: amzn.to/3qapNql
Hand Pruners:
Amazon Canada: amzn.to/2YSIFxP
Amazon USA: amzn.to/3q3Oftq
Amazon UK: amzn.to/2YR3Xf8
Watering Can:
Amazon Canada: amzn.to/39U4nIc
Amazon USA: amzn.to/2YR3p94
Amazon UK: amzn.to/3oX7hAa
Spray Gun:
Amazon Canada: amzn.to/3aBxijm
Amazon USA: amzn.to/3aL7UHS
Amazon UK: amzn.to/3ruol1Z
Gardening Gloves:
Amazon Canada: amzn.to/2Lt6ZDx
Amazon USA: amzn.to/3tzJ32t
Amazon UK: amzn.to/3jpf1cU
#gardening #peppers #howto
Time to Harvest your Garlic! The Complete Guide here: czcams.com/video/A9qUN_FSCjg/video.html
Good
Hi there i planted kashmir chillies this year(southern hemisphere new zealand)
I planted seeds in september and by feburary 5mnths later the bushes were 3 ft high with about 200 flowers. The chillies finally started in feb. And while the bushes were failing to grow the chillies bigger they kept on making flowers!!??
I was getting angry because the bushes were dicking round making new flowers while failing to finish what they started with the original berries. Its now march and im still waiting for them to ripen!?? The frosts are late and the bushes should have died and thyr still dicking round not ripening. I got 1 ripe chilie about a minth ago and the rest are green.
I picked at least 100 flowers off to stop it wasting its time as its not even dealing with what its got! What am i doing wrong?
I planted two plants in a 20 litre bag of soil and it seems to love it.
@@nathangrueber9834 yeah, all peppers will do that. They are perennial by nature and think they have all the time in the world. Picking fruit, lots of sun, and removing new flowers are the only things you can do really to speed it up
For your experiment I would suggest you try it with plants that have more soil for themselves.
A 20 liter pot per plant, 3 pots per group gives you a bit of a more controlled group.
Pepper plants are limited by nutrition and space. If you put them in big pots they will grow significantly bigger
Here in South Africa, we have a habit of picking off the first flowers preventing them to fruit until the plants have tripled in size, this makes the plants stronger and flower much more yielding a higher harvest. this is especially the case with any of the hot peppers and chilies.
proof or it didn't happen african fella...
@@briancockerham4731
Why? Rude fella, he’s not a fisherman he’s a gardener. My Bell Peppers here in Australia are more prolific but smaller than normal and i pruned them. Also the wall thickness is thinner and thus they get sunburnt easily. It’s horses for courses my friend! Happy Peppering 🫑🌶️.
@@kevdimo6459 proof or it didn't happen Australian fella
This is also the case for strawberries too (and their runners too). Interesting how that's goes back to peppers. I wonder if the first/first year cutting back production to EXACTLY "zero" contributes to other plants to be hardier and MUCH more productive later on.
@@liciernagadelanoche2337
Butt out fella!
I've been following your channel for awhile now, and would like to comment on the pruning of pepper plants. I've been gardening for over 45 years and not once have I pruned my pepper plants. I usually grow about 12 plants. Over the last winter I've wanted to get other gardeners thoughts on pruning. I decided that I would prune, like you, half of the pepper plants, and leave the other half not pruned. In all honestly I doubled my pepper production with the pruned plants then I did with the non-pruned plants, and the peppers were bigger then the non-pruned plants. I know there's a lot of controversy on the subject of pruning or not pruning but these were just my results. What I would like to do is, do this for 2-3 years and maybe I can get a better idea on which is the better for the plants. Thanks
Right on John, thanks for sharing!! For sure share your results in the coming seasons, its valuable information! :-)
John, like you, I massively increase yields by topping and continued pruning of my pepper plants. I’m here in Maine where more pepper folklore says it’s not worth growing peppers in the north. Lol! Wrong. It is 100% without question a benefit to both top and continue to prune pepper plants and unlike the video here, I way more than double my production. Last year I also did a side by side comparison and my results were completely opposite this guys.
Plant for plant I get an average of 4 bells per un-pruned plant and an average of 13 per pruned plants.
My suspicion about his experience is that he didn’t understand when to prune/top them and the plants were too delicate when planting out as a result.
The test is a farse. With ambiguous figures.
@@karlbutlerking whatever
There are so many variables to consider. Perhaps it wasn't that the plants that could only support a finite number of fruit but the medium it is grown in. Just my opinion that the depth of the planter seemed shallow. My plants generally grow in soil that is 12" deep or more.
In the past, I have pruned all of my peppers, but this year, my first in Florida, I forgot. I grew sweet bell peppers, jalapeños, lemon drops, hungarian finger peppers, and habaneros. They are now 7 feet tall, in pots, and overproducing like crazy. I have started to share them with neighbors and dehydrating the rest, we have so many. They outshone everything else in the garden.
Awesome! That's what I like to hear!
Hey that is so tall I was wondering if you could tell me how you fertilized them?
This is amazing! Could you please tell me what you used to feed your pepper plants and prepare the soil with? Thanks!
@@haneesh22 I feed my peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants the same. Blood meal, bone meal and grow them in coco plus perlite mix.
@@ABetterMeee Before I plant my seedlings, I prep the soil with worm castings, kelp meal and biochar.
I figured this out through experiment last year with Bell, Habanero, Jalapeño, and Giant Marconi… The pruned Bell and Giant Marconi peppers took longer to first fruit harvest and they were considerably smaller than those plants that weren’t pruned. However, the Jalapeños and Habaneros that were pruned produced more peppers of the same size as the unpruned plants, despite the first fruit harvest being delayed about 3 weeks compared to the unpruned plants! Conclusion: Definitely don’t prune Bell peppers or Giant Marconi peppers, and pruning jalapeños and Habaneros definitely helps to produce more fruit of equal size despite a delayed first harvest! Hope this is helpful…
Thanks for comments by variety. Well done.
Definitely. The smaller varieties can for sure benefit from a pruning! Agreed.
Yeah, I agree to that from my experience as well. Bell peppers is better to be left unpruned... Warm weather and rich compost is enough to give you a decent amount of large fruit...
I had the same experience with banana peppers and hot Nana peppers as well. I was curious about jalapeños & the Carolina Killers lol so thank you for your comment very much!! this year. The small army of peppers will be a force to be reckoned with lol planted 50 a week ago 🥵 half in natural light half in artificial lighting 😊 Carolina strong 💪🏽
Thanks for sharing your results. Helps us newbie veggie growers. : )
Jeff, Qualitatively? Quantitatively? Once again, you rock! Keep ‘em comin’.
Thanks so much buddy! Happy Wednesday to you friend!
I have finally been able to grow peppers that look like those in the grocery store! FINALLY!!! I did not prune my peppers.
Right on Andi! Its definitely a good feeling..and tasty!
Kudos, Andi!
I'm glad to see someone talking about this and actually testing it out! I topped half mine this year as an experiment (only 20 plants) and their performance was much worse than the ones I left alone. It took too long for them to start fruiting. I was growing mostly small chilli peppers too. I'm in the UK with a short growing season for peppers (plus it doesn't get very hot here) and it's hard to get any kind to maturity. I certainly won't be doing it next year. I do wish people wouldn't give out blanket advise stating you 'must' do things as it doesn't take into account vastly different growing conditions.
did you change your fertilization strategy? They need more P and K when you prune them, otherwise you are expecting them to spread the same amount of resources to more flowers (leading to less nutrients per flower).
@@mking1982098 They got fed weekly, there just wasn't enough time (and heat) in our season for them to catch up to the unpruned ones.
You can always setup a small grow tent inside pretty affordable if you don't need fans with carbon filter to keep the smell inside..
I have noticed that some peppers like to topped and some do not. You have to experiment and see what likes what. Sometimes a different phenotype of the same type of pepper will respond well to topping while the original phenotype did not.
I watched one of your videos on tomato growing recently, I thought right on, of all the videos I watched I thought this is the one for me. I became the master in so much of a way that I continued on and pruned all my peppers too...Oh well I will know better next year. Plus instead of getting to caught up in too many strategies I am going to make The Ripe Tomato my default gardening channel...thanks man.
Too kind Don! At least with pruning you don't ruin the peppers or your harvest.... It's just that pruning the large varieties in areas with short winters can result in lower yields... Not as dramatic as the thumbnail would suggest, ha ha!
Your video headline pulled me in! So glad you made this, thanks!
Cheers, thanks for watching!
I learned my lesson last year. Not for the same reason, but in northern climate where the season is very short, the pruned peppers never had a chance to reproduce before the season was over. It was an experiment for me anyways 🤷♂️
Yup, that's a biggie! In shorter growing seasons, cutting the tops off can really set them back and then there isn't enough time to recover and produce. You're so right.
Thank you for taking the time to do this comparison
After having my kale for two seasons, 😲, i babied my last year’s bell pepper plant over winter and pruned it a little near spring…. This year it was flowering early, it doubled in size and produced huge peppers. Very exciting discovery.
I have three potted chili pepper plants. One was pruned early on. The other two weren't.
The two that weren't produce larger peppers that are a nice bright red color, while the pruned one produces smaller peppers that are more orange in color.
All the plants are doing well, but there's nothing like seeing those nice plump red peppers on the non-pruned plants! 🌶
Thanks for sharing! Glad its not just me seeing these results! :-)
It's astounding that you can get so many peppers from such small petite pepper plants.
Heh heh....my goal is grow peppers......not leaves! 🙂
Companion Planting.....employ the buddy system in your garden for insane results!: czcams.com/video/FPpVNsB1VC4/video.html
dude you are such a pro at what you do. I come to your channel alot always learn something from you. appreciate you sharing your knowledge
@@s.f.morris7331 thanx so much man, that is really nice to hear! Thanks for the support!
I grew California wonders a couple years ago, unpruned, and they produced soooo many peppers I couldn't keep up with them. They produced right till frost. Thanks for this video. I won't be pruning them. Our growing season is too short to go meddling like that.
Love this video. Everything about it is nice and concise. It's short, sweet, to the point, very informative, has good B-Roll, has good text graphics, and has nice production quality. Plus I learned a lot! I'm an apt. gardener and giving peppers a try from saved seed. They are doing very well! I know I'm a bit late but this year is more about experimenting and any harvests would be a bonus. Keep up the great work man!
I really appreciate how you make your videos. Not only are they extremely informative but they're also entertaining. Thank you for all your hard work and effort, and Much ❤️ from Nashville TN USA 🇺🇸 😀
Heck yeah!
Get more Strawberries this year!: czcams.com/video/iGjzKBsr954/video.html
Probably one of the better examples of statistically significant results we'll find anywhere on CZcams. While this was not conducted in a lab, it's far better than most we'll see. Too many times people make claims based on an extremely low sample size. Thank you for the effort put into this!
N of 36 on each side of the data in his sample size is enough. I’d like to know how the plants were ordered in the garden, if they had the same soil, fertilizer, sun time/shade, water, etc.
You always are truly a blessing! Great teacher! Thank you for your excellence!
Love the work, results and caveats! Thanks for this contribution to the culture!
Discussed this a little over on IG with ya....definitely agree the bells are the peppers that would benefit least from topping and that smaller peppers absolutely love it. Curious if that’s as tall as your bells got this season? I’m in Portland which probably has a bit longer season (mid May to mid oct) but pretty similar climate and ours were close to 4’ tall with only a single application of worm tea all season... While I still grow bells as I like roasted green peppers for jambalaya, we have moved to giant marconi peppers as the ones we let go red...seem to ripen faster, are huge peppers and fruit wall thickness-wise are almost identical.
As for topping bigger peppers, I think a huge factor is when you top em. As I mentioned on IG, I start my peppers indoors early (mid feb to go out mid to late May) so they have time to fully recover from the stress of the topping before they undergo the stress of transplant. Sorry if I missed it in the video but how long did u wait after transplant to top the plants?
Love the approach, great way to quantify the hypothesis you are testing! Another well thought out video...
Right!? That's something that I also thought. If your growing season is too short then the plant won't have enough time to recover from the topping before its structures mature enough to maintain a high yield of peppers. Also a higher yield demands a higher nutrient intake, a higher foliage area and a higher light quantity for adequate fruit development. I couldn't see anywhere what the nutrient plan for this plants were but if he gave the same amount of sunlight and nutrients to both pruned and not pruned plants then of course fruit yield would suffer in the pruned plants as it has increased nutrient requirements. The plant knows and shows in its fruits and flowers when it is nutrient deficient, they drop flowers early and the fruit is smaller and simpler tasting. All in all I think that his conclusions came from a deficient nutrient approach and possibly short growing season specially for this big bell peppers which take longer than hot peppers to mature.
Edit: I don't think the author's conclusion was wrong, I believe that the correct conclusion would have been "Don't prune your peppers if your growing season is too short or if you're not going to apply extra fertilizer"
Yes the guy simply didn't do it quite right and the conditions are not perfect for high yields. Really annoys me reading all the comments. Kind of strange that all these amateurs who are very casually growing, unaware of all the factors and variables that go exist in this context, just happen to have zero success in pruning and with this one video they declare that they now "know" that pruning is bad. Many of them claim to appreciate the scientific approach to the video but this is not scientific and drawing conclusions in this manner is anti scientific
Extremely thorough yet direct to the point. Great job and thanks for taking some of the grief out of this decision, this is the first year I'm growing a lot of peppers and they are looking great 2 weeks after transplant but I've always been torn on whether to top or not. I still might experiment with a few anyway but I'll take your advise and let those babies grow!
I am planning out my next year pepper growing and was focused on pruning them as well. Thanks to your video that idea is totally off the table.
I super appreciate this video! I pruned my peppers this year because last year they were super leggy and spindly, but my crop was decimated by slugs so I'll be buying starts anyway. But this video will hopefully help infer my pepper planting decisions in the future!
Thanks Heidi, glad to help. Best of luck this year, you got this! :-)
Thanks for weeding this out for us Jeff! This is invaluable information. The one benefit of pruning not discussed though is pruned plants need less support. Mine have the tendency to flop over when laden with fruit. But I’ll gladly take the time to support them better to get better quality fruit.
You're so right Mike! These last 2 seasons, as my plants get bigger and better, I've had to stake them so much more diligently!
I appreciate all the work you put into this. Great job!
Last year I pruned. Had a really poor crop and slugs really enjoyed the peppers before they ripened. Admittedly it was a wet season but these were in a greenhouse. I even bought a couple of plants from a garden centre but the result was the same. I'd not pruned before and this time I'll be going back to the original method. This year I'm having trouble with my usual brand of compost! Grrr! So thank you for the experiment as I prefer red (or yellow) peppers to the very few small unripened green ones that we had last year.
I just opened a few bags of supposedly black kow, but there were huge rocks, skipping stones, even plastic garbage, and it is mostly mulch. I expect all the wood to steal nitrogen from my plants since it isn't broken down already. I plan to let Ace Hardware know, and I also plan to write them a snail mail compliant letter. Fortunately I have a reliable (and much cheaper) locally sourced alternative Lowe's sells here. It's been my "go to" for years, but I just had to see if all the hype about Black Kow was true. Certainly not in my case.
Wow I was so bummed that my peppers were small .Now I know why .Thank you so much
Cheers Rory, thanks for watching. :-)
Glad to see the follow up for this experiment! Thanks for taking eh time to test it
Cheers Dave.....I just couldn't leave it...its been eating at me since last year!
Never trimmed, didn't believe the idea, and after your teaching I will do as you tested and I've have grown many bells as stuff with brown rice and burger 5 days all summer is how much I love peppers and their foliage always so beautiful.
Thanks Jeff
Right on John, may you have a BOUNTY of peppers this season!
I manly plant chili peppers. I made similar observation but less controlled conditions.
Now I only prune my peppers if they tend to become too big, before I can plant them outside. In this case the 2-weeks set back is intended :-)
This is good to know for ornamental peppers. I'm glad I pruned my black pearl peppers and not my edible ones
Right you are Denny...most smaller ornamentals can definitely be pruned. Especially if growing indoors as a perennial.
Black pearl peppers taste great on pizza though lol
So glad I saw this come up during a pepper research binge. First time growing them and I was concerned I missed the prune stage as my pepper plants are small but are already fruiting. The small varieties I have I think I could still prune and be fine. But I will leave the big varieties alone since they have fruits developing already and have a chance to be big and fabulous. Appreciate this video. Subscribed
Thanks T D! Yes, the smaller ones can definitely be pruned. Early on though. Usually at the 3rd or 4th set of true leaves. Beyond that, just let the plant grow and it'll do what it does. Best of luck on the season, let us know how it goes!! 🙂
THANK YOU so so so much for this. All the other videos focus on small hot peppers. While I do grow some of these, the majority of peppers I love are sweet bell peppers. I'll eat them like apples when in full season. You've saved me so much worry and confusion! Bless you!
Wow, what a gem of a video. You speak clearly, at a perfect place, excellent explanations and details of the theory. You sir, are a joy to watch! Thanks for the great video!!
Thank you this is very timely was just considering trimming my red and the green bell pepper plants I have in pots
Thanks for checking it out Kate! Best of luck with your peppers!
Thank you so much for this experiment. I have bell peppers growing now and have been on the fence if I should top them off or not. So glad I just watched this. I’m in Florida so these grow great in the fall.
I did top my cayenne plants though. They seem to grow better that way instead of being all lanky.
Thanks for watching! In Florida, with the longer growing season, I'd be tempted to try a couple... Just to see... But I still believe that the big pepper varieties cap out anyways. Either way, best of luck!
Thank you! This video, and viewers' comments, were very helpful.
For any plant, if you prune or “top” them to create bifurcating nodes, you need to increase potassium and phosphorus to increase yield
Hmm, that’s good to know, makes sense, probably why my peppers didn’t do well last year after I pruned them and then everything got blight, last year was not a good garden year for me
Nitrogen first, for about the first 1/4 - 1/3 of the season, then heavy p/k for the next few months, right?
@@thagingerninjer5391 It depends on where each pepper is in development and what your goals are. It's way more complicated than do x during y part of the season. You wants plenty of nitrogen while the plant is growing. When you don't want it to grow anymore slow down on the nitrogen. When flowers come and fruit starts to set you want plenty of Phosphorus and little nitrogen. Phosphorus is key for fruiting because it helps transport all the crucial nutrients to the fruit.
That's pretty much exactly what I said, just with more words. Lol.
@@thagingerninjer5391 no, sorry but it's not. Not everyone lives in the same zone so "first 1/4 of the season" may not scale for everyone. Not everyone is growing from seeds either. Also it's important to understand *why* you are using a nutrient at this time versus that time. Only then can you know the right decision to make. If you guess and go by an arbitrary time frame rather than what you're circumstances actually require then you are more likely to make a mistake - that's just not how you professionals and serious growers approach things. This is science, chemistry, and biology there's a reason things work the way they do.
Your bell peppers look a lot better than many I've seen on CZcams.
Thanks Ron! :-)
New to growing peppers and chilli plants here in Scotland (started in 2020). Great to see a vid where growing conditions look similar to what we experience here (snow). I have 'topped' plants last year and the previous year. Will 'top' some and let others grow naturally. Fingers, toes and eyes are crossed that one of the methods brings more fruit.
I live in Saskatchewan, I start 100 bell pepper plants every February 1st indoors, I remove apical meristem when plants are 1 foot tall. Around May 1st i put the plants in my greenhouse outside, by mid june my pepper plants are becoming trees. On average I get about 15 large thick peppers per plant. I usually have to steak the stems. From my experience in a short cooler growing season this seems to be the best method, start the plants in Feb if you love peppers this much haha.
Awesome!
Can’t wait! ❤️
:-)
Ever wondered what's so special about greenhouses? I got 6 reasons why in this latest Garden Quickie hot take!: czcams.com/video/QnSZBO7zhIE/video.html Also, if you're ever wondering how I built mine and some insider tips, check this out!: czcams.com/video/TjfwegTGYKc/video.html
My oder Bell pepper 1000kg Pakistan
for what i know as an agrologist if you prune the peppers especially in the large peppers you need more fertilizer especially phosphorus and potasium
@@dimos5422 makes sense
A solid experiment with quality results. Thanks for the information.
36 of each method made for an awesome study! I paused at the 4:21 mark to comment, and say I am really excited to see your results. The science is great, and I have new peppers growing! I'll determine what to do based on what your results show.
Jeff, very timely for those of us living down under, my first growing of peppers last year, did prune but terrified I was doing it wrong sat with ipad playing to ensure I did do as advised, super poor result from 6 plants, 3 died 3 survived total peppers 2 as developed way too late, and one I let keep going to see what happened over winter just picked it next spring! No I’ll leave well alone this year
Right on Tassie! Jealous that you are just coming into your spring season now! All the best! :-)
Been looking forward to seeing the results of this… very interesting & so much information!! Thank you Jeff for taking the time. Really appreciated 🙏🏻
so glad the no prune did better. That will make things easier next year 👏🏻🥰
Easier AND better results..what's not to like, right? Ha ha, cheers Jo! :-)
Thank you for your time in doing this trial.
Cheers Leslie, thanks so much for watching. :-)
Great video! Love how you point out your short growing season and type of pepper grown for this summer experiment. Thanks!
Thanks Ronnie, appreciate that! Best of luck with all your pepper endeavours this season!
I had no idea how deep I could plant Pepper plants until your videos.
Awesome! Pretty cool they are just like tomatoes... Maybe not as crazy stem roots, but they still do. Cheers!
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms Oh I didn’t know this! I’m going to do this.
@@aquaseahorselove3939 It really helps to establish the young plants faster! :-)
Pruning keeps the plants shorter and little staking is required. When frost arrives it is much easier to protect shorter plants, especially if windy c
it is supposed to make them stockier and stronger and i have noticed that. i have yet to find a reason to prune my peppers. yes i have tried several times and they have yet to produce as well as the others.
Interesting, a good comparison on size and weight. I've been pruning mine for a couple of years, I think I'll try this experiment as well and check the results. Great video!
Thanks you for mentioning that the walls of the pruned pepper was less even the color was off. Thanks so much for sharing this
Cheers! :-)
One less task for next year. Thanks Jeff love time saving, more time for more gardening
Exactly Bev... Less work for better results! Win-Win!
Glad I viewed this video. I'm located in Ottawa Canada and, like you, I have a short growing season. My seedlings are actually starting to flower under my new LED lights this year and I was going to prune them now (mid-March) but after viewing your video I'll leave them to flourish and just raise the lights! Thanks for your down to earth, easy to follow videos.
Hey Marlene, that's some early flowering!! If you have the numbers, you could always prune a couple and maybe compare the differences? Only if you have enough though.... Cheers! :-)
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms only a handful of plants so won't be able to do a fair comparison. Used full spectrum lights from a box store and impressed with results. Enjoy your videos very much 😊
Pruning them produces better yield if you fertilize them properly (I'm also an Ontario resident). You need to give the pruned plants more K than you would with non-pruned plants. Of course the results are going to be weaker if you don't change your fertilization strategy, as the plant has to spread the same amount of resources to a larger number of flowers.
@@mking1982098 of your soil is saturated with nutrition to begin with, adding more NPK isn't going to do anything...
@@mking1982098 appreciate the tip...thanks
I have learned more about this subject since this video has come out. If you top your plants above the third set of true leaves and do it early enough for the plant to recuperate before planting you can mitigate the negative effects of topping the plants.
This is the best test I have seen so far. Good job!
Yes please waiting.
Thanks Holly, hope you like! :-)
I agree. Did the same experiment last year. I am officially ANTI pepper pruning.
Ha ha, we're on the same page!
What an excellent video with a analysis to back up your results. Great job !
Pruning depends on your climate and where the plant is growing. There is evidence pruning is bad but also evidence which says the contrary. I usually prune half of my plants.
Yup, which is what I say in the video. If you have a longer growing season and are working with the smaller varieties that produce more, pruning can be done with great success.
Really helpful info! I chose not to prune mine this year, and I’m getting a steady harvest here in FL.
Right on Robin, congrats on the harvests!
Good to know!!!
:-)
Thank you so much for that video! The information that you gave was way above anecdotal. 👏👏👏
Well presented and nice to see a 'scientific' approach. Thank you.
I read that quick a second time and thought it said don't prune preppers 🤣
LOL, don't prune those either!!
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms Good to know 🤣
@@net4216 :-)
I did also 😂
I needed this video. Keep up the good work! Thanks 🙂
Hey, thanks for watching! :-)
The way you make 80% of your sentences sound like questions, makes me smile. I like the way you talk. Every time the Juccuzi Remodel ad shows up on tv and the woman speaks, I think of you hahaha. No disrespect, it's pure joy. Also thanks for the Pepper pruning info last year.
I have been gardening with my father ever since I was 5 years old, and I am 27 now and when I was younger, I grew pepper plants in a huge, raised bed garden. But now I live in a condo and grow peppers near a window that spans the length of half my condo, so I now grow my peppers in 5 gallon grow bags. And what I noticed is if you have a large space like a raised bed garden pruning doesn't make much of a difference but when growing in containers it does. And I think the reason for this is because containers are so restrictive on the roots that it causes the pepper plants to flower when they are way too young and small to have a decent harvest. So, in containers pruning is the only way to get them to grow big before they set fruit but in a raised bed garden it really isn't necessary.
There's definitely an art form to pruning and the smaller varieties really can benefit from it. Love that you're indoor growing, that's awesome!
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms yeah I just do pruning at the beginning stage while the plant is still young and all the pruning I really do is topping the pepper plants while they're like a month and a half old. Of course pruning while growing in containers is kind of a necessity because they tend to go to flower a lot earlier in containers if you don't prune them early on.
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms I'm currently harvesting the last of my cayenne peppers which are my favorite to grow in containers in particular.
One advantage of prune might be less likely to break limbs and lose fruit and blooms , something to consider
Thanks Staking also help prevent brakeage.
Lots of good points,I stake or into the tomato cages that doesn't work for tomato plants anyway
Thanks
For sure John... Prune for structure and stake for support.... No argument here! :-)
Really well thought out and executed video. Loved the comparison of even the pepper wall. New sub 👋
Hey, thanks for that! Appreciate the support! :-)
I pruned all 12 of my Pretty 'n Sweet pepper seedlings in 2022 and had what I thought was a great harvest. However, they were smaller than I expected (1st time planting that variety) and after watching your video, they were probably smaller than they could have been had I NOT pruned. This year, I'm planting 40 plants (sweet and hot varieties) and will not prune. Keeping my fingers crossed for a bountiful harvest! As always, thanks for another informative video!
Thank you for this video. Im new to pepper gardening and I was researching a lot. This topic came up so many times that it confused me. After watching this video, I WILL NOT BE PRUNING MY PEPPER PLANTS
Cheers Kimme! I think its wise....it CAN be done....but the benefits are so negligible in a lot of cases, so I'd avoid it. :-)
I agree with you 100%, because I experimented on my pepper plants this year also, and had the worst harvest ever. At first, I was excited when I noticed the shoots popping out on all the nodes of the peppers, after a week of topping them. Then when I planted them in the ground, the plants stayed low and they took forever to produce fruit. I saw this method of planting peppers on CZcams and it seems to be productive and so I tried it. But to my big dismay, I ended up with way less harvest and smaller in size, compared to previews harvest. I was upset for listening to the youtuber who posted it. Lesson learned, do check on the reviews first before acting on it, lol. Next year, I'm going back to my normal method of planting. Thank you for sharing this video.
Exactly Mary....for the last 5 seasons I've been just that in limited capacity and pretty much every time, the same thing. So we're on the same page! :-)
If you are only growing bells your better of NOT topping. But topping is good for some annums but mostly for chinense, baccatums, pubescenses, frutescences, and some annum increases production by a lot. The one pepper you never ever too are bell peppers. And with topped peppers they need an extra 3-6 weeks indoors so start them earlier. The hotter the pepper, start em earlier. At first you think topping stunts them, and it does, but after that stunted phase they grow insane. The not topped peppers might produce sooner, but in the grand scheme of things, topped peppers will produce more. Some peppers you almost have to top em for good production like hot to super hot peppers and baccatum species pepper (baccatums are very prolific and the pods straight up taste like fruit) they are very vigorous plants so topping really helps. One thing with baccatums they like taken their time to ripen so again start early.
@@pineforpryo9118well, I live here in Buffalo and we only have 4 months of warm weather to grow veggies in the garden. The results of the pepper plants experiment won't probably be as bad, if the growing season is longer. Thank you for sharing your knowledge regarding the matter.
@@maries716gardenvlog6 New York? You live quite close to me I am in nj. You have a 168 day growing season free of frost. Nearly everyone has only 4 or 5 months of summer expect people in the mid to Deep South. You can plant peppers, tomatoes, and other warm loving crops staring mid may. Yeah I can transplant about a week or two earlier but that ain’t much difference. No reason not to top variety’s if they benefit greatly from it
Ty for this video, great tip 👍 I will experiment with a couple of mine in the Spring. I live in Indiana and this year my bell peppers just started growing peppers a week ago and I didn't prune them.
Its totally worth the experiment Tamara. It won't kill the plants and you'll STILL get peppers. Let me know the results!
Thank you sooooo much!!! So many discrepancies on this topic
Here in UK and just about to transfer my peppers to my allotment from the greenhouse. Really glad I saw this vid and thanks for posting. Very informative.
Hey thanks for watching and best of luck with the transfer!
Thank you!! 🌼
Cheers Michelle, thanks for watching! :-)
From S Africa. Will definitely not prune and hope the results match. Thanks. Very good vid.
Right on Russel! Best of luck, keep us updated on the results!
Just what I needed to know. Great job. Not TOO detailed, but a memorable story. Thanks for doing the research! Good job.
I was just debating pruning my peppers today and googles handy ai sent this post to my suggestions. Really appreciate your shared experiment on this topic! Good work 🌱❤️
I have heard several gardeners say that you should pull the early blooms before the plant is mature enough to focus the energy into growing the plant first. The results seem to be better from what I've seen. I have about 60 pepper plants this year so I'm gonna try a few different ways to see which works best for my individual circumstances. No method is universal for everyone.
Yeah, if you have an elongated spring before really warm weather hits, eliminating those early blooms can for sure help. Like you said, everyone's growing conditions are different. If I lived in a warmer climate, I'd be pruning ALL my peppers and treating them as perennials.
Lol. I planted mine too early and they flowered really small. I did an ISIS on them. Now sprouting everywhere. I still have a 6 month growing season so hopefully they'll come good.
Should be plenty enough time! Best of luck, excited to hear how it goes!
The video and the comments developed into the best help I could ever get. Some of last years chili pepper plants has so many peppers, but they were all smaller than I had hoped for. The same with bell peppers and Cubanelles. I must need to use the correct fertilizers and fert more often. All of my peppers are grown in three gallon pots. This year I bought a 1500 watt grow light and I'm bottom watering and having a great early start. I lined a hugh Costco box with spray glue and Aluminum foil and the light is working it's magic. I live in zone 9a and it is still very cold outside. ThankQ all for the comments.
Absolutely great analytical video ,thanks
Thanks Robert! :-)
Excellent presentation. I wish you growth of your CZcams channel, Sir
Hey, thanks for that Steve, really means a lot. :-)
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms
Personally. I would like to see a video on fusarium and verticillium tomato wilts. How to tell the difference and how to deal with in current and next tomato plantings. Do some of the antifungal products work on these wilts? i.e. MycoStop, an innoculant of a plant-harmless root fungi that keep out fusarium fungus or some of the inorganic fungicide products?
Just a thought, perhaps a suggestion for some future episode. :)
@@summerbeemeadow 100% Steve... My problem is that I need to experience things before documenting. I've really tried hard to walk a straight line only talking about things I know of. If I can't give authentic advice, I simply won't give it. Having said that, wilts and fungal outbreaks are on my bucket list of video topics! Shoot, I purposefully didn't water a tomato bed just to get a video on tomato Leaf Curl and subsequently blossom end rot! So it's likely coming sooner than later, ha ha! Cheers man.
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms We had a very hot & humid week of weather here near Syracuse, NY. I planted my tomatoes too close to each other and had not yet pruned lower leafs as I was sick all week. When I checked on the garden, I had a circular area among several plants that looked like someone had dropped a fungal bomb right there. Plants sagged, wilted, leaves turned brown, and the plants collapsed in just several days, even as their fruits were still growing or ripening. and the infected zone got larger. Bummer, but I WILL beat this next year. I intend to kill it with science.
Or at least for bell. I pruned all my pepper plants and my bells were smaller. But the rest were amazing. I won't prune the bells again, but can I offer you a few hundred habeneros? Lol
Ha ha for the Habs I bet it IS the opposite! They probably just go crazy after pruning Pamela!
I'll take some lol.. could trade for some ghost.. or ghengis khan brain...
Don't have a few hundred.. lol. But 40 or 40 if each.. this year already lol
This was super interesting!! Thanks so much for sharing!
My friend you done an excellent demonstration and you gave me fantastic TIPS about pepper’s. Is have 4 colour’s pepper’s, and I love them. I live in London United Kingdom, Thanks again 👍
Hey thanks, my pleasure and glad you got something from the video yannis! 🙂
Perfect analysis. Much appreciate it!
Those are beautiful bells! I never pruned my peppers as I feel they naturally branch out by themselves when they are ready. I only prune to shape the plants.
Exactly JT! They branch out so much on their own already! They don't need any extra!
I watched this video again ... EXCELLENT analysis! Did you clip off the top just once only (when the peppers were young) during the life of the pepper plant? Love your gigantic red peppers!
Thanks Yanni! Yes, only one initial pruning, that was it. :-)
Great video! Thanks for taking the time to do this!
I have mare this experiment in România! Prunning Peppers were set back . Your conclusion was right, but i still maintain my theory that this is because diferent growing seasons!
Right on Lucian! Keep on growing!
I'm on board count me in. .
Good to finally put this one to rest! 6 months in the making