Another pic

Yet Another

Last Pic. Thank you for any advice up front. Only second year growing and I have never topped a plant and have pinched off buds very little and I do not want to screw this up or kill the plants.

Bill

From what I've been reading, I would guess that you should pinch off the buds now but wait to top them until they're a foot tall. I'm still a pepper noob (gardening noob for that matter), so if anyone give any other advice, definitely take their opinion over mine. :)

Hey, Bill.
I top most of my pepper plants when they are about 4-6 inches tall just to induce branching which gives more places for fruit later on. I also pick those flower buds off until till later. Some do some don't. Not quite sure if there is a right or wrong answer. But... I do know that plant is now focusing on reproducing and not so much growing. A number of things can cause this early budding and its no cause for alarm. Some things that can cause it: stress, PH fluctuation, high phosphate and or potash levels, light spectrum change, light duration change and temperature fluctuation.
I'm sure there is many other examples that cause budding...
Eric.

This post was edited by LeafEricson on Tue, Feb 25, 14 at 20:46

they are starting to v out. go ahead and top them now. if you really want to experiment then take all the leaves off except the bottom two. (stripping)

Just from what I have done, not sure if it's the best practice, but I pinch all the buds off until I'm happy with the size of the plant. Even with nursery plants I had taken all preexisting buds off to let them grow. In my first year from seed (this year), I am very diligent to take off all signs of flowers - likely too diligent, as I am admittedly over watching them! From what I have noticed I can tell you that by picking off the buds they do seem to put out more leaves and stems thus far. Take that with a grain of salt though, as I did have a Thai plant years ago that had numerous flowers on it from the nursery that I never touched... That plant harvested an easy 200 peppers in the year still. Albeit, those Thais are heavier producers, with many smaller chillis. My assumption with this go-around is that by the off chance that the plant didn't drop the flower on its own I really don't want it to spend valuable resources into building a pepper when it's only 6in tall. When the plant is large enough I'll allow it to hunker down and bear fruit. Just my rationale at this point. As far as topping, I've never done it... Not to say I haven't wanted too, I just haven't had the gusto to make it happen. What I have noticed is that the super hots seem to keep the one straight stem for a very long time, mine are about 12in tall now and haven't V'd at all yet. Compare that to the bells, Hungarians, and an unknown variety that was sold as classic red chilli - all of those plants (at about the same height) have 4-5 splits in the stems already, making topping a nonexising issue.

I don't know much about this either what do you mean by topping? And does punching the buds just mean pulling them off?

Pinching off the buds is just as you thought, basically just pruning off the flowers. Topping refers to (literally) cutting the whole top of the plant off. Many times this is done right after the plant takes it's classic "Y" shape - though it can be done before or after this has occurred. The idea behind topping is that many peppers will produce a plant that has only 2 main branches (the tops of the "Y" formation). When it is topped, it is forced to promote more lateral growth (rather than vertical), thus creating more branches. With more branches the hope is that the yeild will be increased.

I would cut down on fertilizing and also number of hours of light . When you give them plenty of foods, 16 hours of day, that is how they respond. Also in small container, plants bloom and fruit earlier than if they were in ground or in a bigger container.

JMO
seysonn

topping seems like the way to go, as leaf said it slows them down now, but gives you more places to fruit when they are mature.

These videos demonstrate the effects of topping start to end, spend 10 minutes watching them.

beginning

few weeks later

conclusion

Thank you all for the replies and info.

OKgrowin,
Thank you for the links. Great info.

Pinching and topping here I come.....

Bill

Very interesting utube videos. I've done much topping and "Shaping" of potted ornamental pepper plants we sell but I've never done this with production pepper plants- can't say that I'll start. I'd like to see results of a controlled research study into this practice. Some of my concerns are the strength of the lateral branches in supporting fruit and whether simply removing early buds or fruits might result in same or greater yield potential as loping entire upper stem.

I have test grown some Shishiti pepperes, started on Nov. 7th. They got quite big and I harvested a lot of green pods. But still two more months to go and space at premium, I topped them real good. Now we shall see what will happen.

A lot of the early blooms will naturally abort, so I seldom worry about them. If the flowers seem to be holding, I will pluck them off before they set pods. I remove flowers/buds whenever re-potting or transplanting.

Josh

if you don't wanna go too drastic, last year just for the sake of experiment I cut off a bunch of leaves on one of my thai plants. everywhere that I cut off a leaf, a new branch started, and really quickly too. by doing that and not topping it, I got a plant that was both tall and bushy.