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Bhut Jolokia Pruning Experiment

Stefan (et al.) ...

ok, we are aware that its a n=1 kind of experiment ...

but what is your personal takeaway from this exercise?

- when to prune
- where to prune

etc...

thx,
Al
 
Stefan (et al.) ...

ok, we are aware that its a n=1 kind of experiment ...

but what is your personal takeaway from this exercise?

- when to prune
- where to prune

etc...

thx,
Al

I knew that with an n of 1 it would be impossible to generalize, but my own suspicion is that the results would be the same if it was repeated with a larger sample. Plant tends to be fairly consistent, and the only thing that would throw the results off would be genetic variability. In the end, pruning leads to 125 or so pods from a single first year plant grown in a cold climate, and I am fine with that type of result down the road.

To answer this question, my big takeaway is to prune away the bottom leaves if they look damaged from hardening off. Seeing as some leaves fell off of the unpruned plant on their own, but that plant still had weaker results, I would venture to say that it is best to prune early when any damage first appears.
 
My overall impression is that the worse the growing environment, the more likely pruning is to help rather than hurt.

Pruning diverts energy from longer stem growth into short stem plus pod. That can help you bring to term the first wave or two of pods in a short growing season or with suboptimal conditions but when you end up with a short bushy plant from pruning, at some point it's shading itself more and runs out of sites for new nodes without again trying to grow more stem (higher ratio than it previously had). Plus, past a certain point the plant is more likely to have limbs dragging the ground while loaded with pods, if they don't break off first.

IMO the most important factor is a lot of sun and warmish-hot temps but not too hot, of course allowing for enough water, soil. I think we need a test where the plants achieve a lot more growth per season as well as a far larger sample size to draw a final conclusion, and that for Stefan in Canada, pruning might be the right choice to get a wave of pods in before it gets too cold, but it may be far more limiting to larger plants in better climates or with longer growing seasons.

None of my first-year chinense plants were that small nor produced less than hundreds of pods and I don't have a particularly long growing season, just a nice temperature zone for limiting summer highs, and longer than in Canada. Each successive wave of node splits almost doubled the seasonal yield up to the point where pods didn't have enough time left to ripen before the cold weather set in. I am not against pruning per se, but in my climate it doesn't seem useful. A secondary concern would be if you're overwintering the plants, a small bushy shape can only do so much the next growing season before it's again shading itself a lot and dragging its limbs on the ground.

On the other hand, if you don't at least trim back a plant "some" before overwintering, it takes up a lot of space.
 
would be most interesting then if somebody could take 2 clones from a plant to rule out the genetic component and put them side by side (with all other variables (soil, fert, watering...) being held constant ... - in a way that the only variable being altered is the pruning ...

now that would be an interesting thread ...

cheers
al
 
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