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Pick or Don't Pick early blooms and pods?

Smokenstein

Smokenstein

I've heard varying opinions on this subject and thought I'd see if there's a solid consensus with the folks in here...

We have some pepper plants that are turning out a lot of blooms and peppers, but several of these plants are only a foot to a foot and a half tall. Specifically, I have a tabasco that has been pretty prolific given it's small size. I've heard people say that you should cut or pick the early fruits and blooms off your plants until they grow to be more mature, and I've also heard that doesn't matter. I hate wasting good fruit, but don't want to stunt the growth of my garden for the later months when the peppers and tomatoes should really be productive. Anybody got a solid argument/opinion for one method or the other?

Thanks.
 
I never pinched before this year. I did so for about two weeks, then quit. Some people do and some don't and both seem to have great plants. I think if you have that one very early pod on a small plant, you're better off getting rid of it. If you have 2 plants of similar size, you might try different approaches and see what works for you.
 
Take into account some variables for your situation. Length of growing season. Potted or in ground. What is your goal with the plants, large harvest or simply some great chili to eat.

For myself, since I have several of the same plant I have pinched here and there. The purported benefit of pinching is to let the plant have greater size to be able to support a larger amount of fruit production. I pinched buds that were a bit premature in my estimation. Like your plants, mine are a bit small. I'm not looking for a bumper harvest, just some chili to eat and get some experience preserving some. I'll probably continue to pinch here and there based on production and my ability to consume. Another supposed benefit is that the fewer pods the plant has to support enables the plant to put more effort into the pods it does have. Meaning tastier and bigger fruit. I have no experience on whether this applies to chili's but it's a very common practice in these parts with stone fruit and the growers will swear by it.
 
i've got a goat pepper thats less than a foot tall i pinched and piched this small bushhy beauty and just kept on flowering now it has hundreds if not thousand of buds and flowers. I also piched a few other to make them more bushy but only cot close to the top and new growth seems to be branchng out as i intended.
 
All very good info. So it sounds like you can't really go wrong either way. On the Tabasco I was referencing, I've already picked a dozen or so peppers... once they got to about the size I would expect them to, I picked them instead of letting them ripen. They still tasted good, but there are another dozen peppers on there and a bunch more buds. I may try getting all of that off and see what happens. I've got about 50 total various pepper plants, so maybe I'll try this with some and compare.

Another question... when you say "pinched", is that just garden lingo for picking? :) I'm new to this, so don't want to sound stupid or anything, but wanted to make sure if "pinching" was a different process. And is it better to cut these so it's a clean cut and doesn't damage the plant, or does that matter?

Thanks for the input! These are better explanations than I've heard before... though ultimately still leaves the debate open. :)

BTW, Diablo, my goal is ultimately to turn out a lot of good, tasty, hot peppers. I'm not selling my harvest or anything, so quantity isn't a necessity, and if quality vs. quantity is the question, I'd prefer quality, as I think I'm going to have plenty of healthy plants to have way more than enough peppers than what I need. But you know, there's something to be said about being able to brag about a huge harvest too. I would like to have enough to experiment with many different hot sauce recipes, plenty to dry out and make dry spice out of, and want to smoke some too.
 
"Pinching" is usually used when you kill the bud before the pepper forms or it's really tiny. Tababsco is a good one to pick early if you want to let them grow a bit.

I think a lot depends on what type of pods a plant has - tabasco, for example, is quite small and doesn't suck up a lot of water and nutrients the rest of the plant needs. Something larger, like a wax pepper, does seem to stop the rest of the plant from growing very much if you get several going at the same time. I'm impatient early in the season though and want to let everything form fruit and then pick them greenish and eat them!
 
caroltlw said:
"Pinching" is usually used when you kill the bud before the pepper forms or it's really tiny. Tababsco is a good one to pick early if you want to let them grow a bit.

I think a lot depends on what type of pods a plant has - tabasco, for example, is quite small and doesn't suck up a lot of water and nutrients the rest of the plant needs. Something larger, like a wax pepper, does seem to stop the rest of the plant from growing very much if you get several going at the same time. I'm impatient early in the season though and want to let everything form fruit and then pick them greenish and eat them!
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So, the larger the pepper, the better it is to pinch early if you want the plant to get bigger, correct?

I'm like you on the impatience. I've been letting the tabasco's get to the size they're supposed to be and then picking them, both because I've heard they don't have to ripen like most peppers and I want to eat them, and because I want to keep there from being too much fruit on the plant until it grows larger.

I picked two small poblano's last week because I assumed what you said, that the larger peppers will sap the energy going to the rest of the plant.

I do have a ton of cayenne's that are long, maybe even longer than the ones I grew last year, but I haven't taken them off yet because they haven't started turning colors. Maybe I will go ahead and pick all of those as well and see how they taste green.
 
Large podded Annuums really seem to need pinching more than most others but I pinch evrything for at least a month and have noticed considerably bigger harvests. I wouldn't really recommend eating the green cayennes, but I don't really even like ripe cayennes, you may like them.
 
Smokenstein said:
So, the larger the pepper, the better it is to pinch early if you want the plant to get bigger, correct?
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That's my theory and I'm sticking to it for now. ;)

I'm not overly concerned with super large harvests either though. We'll see how some of my medium sized podded plants do. Basically, if there's a bunch of early pods, I keep an eye on the rest of the plant to see if it's flowering or not, or if it's dropping buds etc and go from there. Maybe pot up or add bloom booster ferts if need be to keep it producing.
 
POTAWIE said:
Large podded Annuums really seem to need pinching more than most others but I pinch evrything for at least a month and have noticed considerably bigger harvests. I wouldn't really recommend eating the green cayennes, but I don't really even like ripe cayennes, you may like them.
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You must have more patience than me!

Cayennes I usually only use for sauces and drying out for spices. I think I'm going to pick one and taste it, then probably pick the rest and see if the plants take off. I only got two cayenne plants this year, so I want to make sure they're as prolific as possible. Last year, that's where I had the most luck.
 
I'm very new to growing, and I've been pinching some plants, and leaving others be. All of my chinenses I've plucked buds up to the third set of forks (nodes), at least the ones that have grown that much. I too have 2 cayennes, one of which I continuously plucked buds off of, and the other of which I left alone. The plant without buds has grown taller than the other one, and is also much greener with larger leaves. The one I left alone has about 20 or so pods varying from just pollinated, to about 4 inches long, all still green. Its growth has seemingly stopped, and it's now concentrating on podding, while the other has only just now begun to pod since I've laid off the plucking. I'm figuring on an early harvest from the one plant, and a later one from the other. I'm sure that as I begin picking fruit from the earlier plant, it too will begin to grow, flower, and pod all over again.

There's 2 cents from someone who's only got a nickel.
 
Here's an Ancho that wasn't pinched and I'm starting to worry about branches breaking.
poblano6-12-09.jpg
 
caroltlw said:
Time for a trellis! Hope it doesn't get too windy there.
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Oops, it already blew over once today. I'm thinking about driving a stake in the ground next to the pot.


Smokenstein said:
If that's not a 2 inch pot and really short grass, that's one big ancho.
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5 gal pot and yes the grass needs mowing. :lol: See the Bahia grass heads.
 
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