Hello everyone

So I have this jolokia plant growing in a huge terracotta pot I found near the house I just moved into. The pot had some old but not "shot" potting soil, and I mixed in some bark, peat moss etc. and other stuff to fluff this up a bit, and transplanted a jolokia pepper plant that I bought from the nursery.

The plant seems to be doing pretty well. I don't have fruit set, but believe me for Seattle it's not bad... there are flowers, and they're not falling off yet so I have hopes for it. Temps have been around 75 in the day and 55 at night, not exactly perfect weather for this guy, but it's at least there has been lots of sun and the new growth on the plant looks healthy. I don't water it very often, maybe once every 10 days or so.

The think I was wondering about is, the older growth from the plant suffers from typical pepper issues; distorted, dull, slightly yellowish leaves. The flowers are all on the upper branches. The bottom of the plant has a lot of fresh growth with dark green waxy leaves and looks great in general. These branches branch out from the stem very close to the soil, but are quite long now. The problem is, I don't see buds on them.

So is this kind of growth normal for this pepper? Is the plant maybe getting too much N (the old potting soil might have been the kind with plant food mixed in), causing the heavy growth at the bottom? Do people every remove "suckers" from pepper plants in order to help them produce? What about "topping" the plant to get it to spend more energy on fruit?

It's already getting kind of late in the season for this thing, and if I don't see any peppers soon I may not have a shot at any ripe fruit at all. But it's hard to get peppers to do much in Seattle, so no big worries there. If I get even a handful of fruit I'll be happy.

Thanks for the help!