Hand pollination = bigger peppers?

12 years ago

I have a rocoto that is now 4 years old. It is truely a survivor. Attacks by hail didn't kill it. Getting toppled over and spilling out of it's pot didn't kill it. And every year it has produced ample ammounts of fruit. The first was the smallest harvest.

It is now in a large pot, and I no longer am going to move it to harden it off and move it outside. This means that I have started playing "bee polinator" with a tiny paint brush. My peppers are HUGE this year, and my plant keeps setting new flowers. My questions are:

1. Are the peppers so big because of the hand pollination? Or could it be that my plant is finally mature and starting to set "normal" size fruit. One of the peppers is almost as big as my fist.

2. Should I continue to "play bee" with the new flowers or is there a point where my plant has enough peppers? I dont want to hurt my precious baby by giving it too much to work on.

I love this pepper and will grow it till I go to the promised land. Thank you for your feedback.

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Comments (3)

jsschrstrcks
12 years ago
As to the first, I'm not sure... I lean towards it finally being established... But I've never grown a Rocoto.

as to the second, Your plant knows its limits, and will start dropping flowers if it needs to. In fact, the fact that not all of the flowers are being polenized may lead to the larger fruit... Its common practice for people growing giant veggies to cut all but one of them off, and let the plant put all of its energy into the one fruit.
nc_crn
12 years ago
Incomplete pollination of peppers rarely happens. You can get more peppers out of hand pollinating, but not bigger peppers. Heck, for the most part once the flower has been open long enough to dry the pollen a bit for distribution the plant pollinates itself pretty quickly.
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Edymnion
12 years ago
Its simply a matter of the pepper's age. Pepper plants produce more, larger, and higher quality pods the older they get, its just that most people don't overwinter them so all they see are the smaller first fruits.