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pics Top it ..and its too weak to bear the fruits - with pics

C

Clueless Wanderer

Here's what happens when you low down top, then pick off 2 rounds of flowers to encourage taller growth and a higher yield. ..she splits under the weight of the fruits.

I wired it up for the two months until fruits were ripe but on post harvest autopsy you can see it never healed.

Excellent amount of fruits at normal diameter but about half the length and weight of averaged sized Jalapenos.


..pictures post harvest.
 
 

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As you noted it is too top heavy and maybe you should have buried the stem in long pot. Never pick out the flowers, as it is better to make the chilis grow more bushier robust plants, than long taller plants that break easy under the weight of the harvest.
 
there are a number of factors that potentially contributed to the results you got with this topped plant. topping is a well known agricultural production technique but there are circumstances where it does not achieve desired results. if you are having problems with weak stems I recommend using a silica additive- last year I used Pro-Tekt and when I went to cut the plants down for the winter had great difficulty due to the strength of the stems. 
 
That plant looks like, minus the double stem, a plant that has not been topped, that got way too tall and fragile. Topping is a technique that focuses on avoiding a plant that looks and behaves like that.
 
I would expect a chile plant that has been correctly topped to be about half that height for that volume of foliage.
 
I would venture guessing that it did not have lots of intense light during its day?

For next season I would recommend more light and using a fan in its early weeks, as wind will make stems larger and stronger.
 
Next season will be better!
 
Horrux said:
That plant looks like, minus the double stem, a plant that has not been topped, that got way too tall and fragile. Topping is a technique that focuses on avoiding a plant that looks and behaves like that.
 
I would expect a chile plant that has been correctly topped to be about half that height for that volume of foliage.
 
I would venture guessing that it did not have lots of intense light during its day?

For next season I would recommend more light and using a fan in its early weeks, as wind will make stems larger and stronger.
 
Next season will be better!
Click to expand...
It was topped at about 4 inches high from seed and later on more soil added to the pot to encourage more root growth.

Four other plants were topped the same, but this one I removed the flowers to encourage more vegetative growth. When the next flowers appeared I removed them too. This is why it got so large and was ready for harvest 6 weeks later than the plants who's flowers I didn't remove.

A total of 6 plants were in the full Australian summer sun. We have had record heat and record rainfall this year, with some days reaching 42C and during the hottest times this one plant was getting 2 liters of water a day; with leaves wilting in under 24 hrs of the watering. Some days it would rain heavy within an hour of them being watered, so this probably impacted the height. The fruits were growing so fast in the sun that a lot of them had stretch marks on them. However, all 4 plants got the same top, same rainfall, same sun, just the big girl had a bigger pot and flowers removed.

Pic 1: The seedlings just potted. Blue circle is the big girl that split - note the lower soil level. Red circle the other seedlings topped the same way at the same time (picture taken a week before topping all plants)

Pic 2: The plants after harvest just before I killed the three in the rectangle pot.

Pic 3: The three in the rectangle pot, just before the first ripe harvest - note the low yield on the left plant was because I damaged the roots when I potted them up (cut the roots with scissors by accident)
 

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     I don't think it was necessarily the topping that led to your stem failure. Whether or not you top your plant, I find that it helps a lot to prune pepper plants for good structure and branch spacing. For thousands of years, peppers have been selected to produce lots of fruit. Selecting for strong stems was overlooked in the quest for big jalapeno pods. If a pepper plant has any kind of structural fault, it won't take much to cause a failure like you saw.
     Your plant had codominant stems.  https://www.arboristnow.com/news/why-are-co-dominant-stems-so-troubling-
 
 
     Here's a pic of my goal when pruning a young plant.
tCJB8fq.jpg

 
     Notice that there are several lateral branches, rather than just two equal size ones that are fighting eachother for dominance and resources. Also they are all smaller than the main stem, so that no one branch grows too big and exerts too much force in one direction.
 
 
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/58972-who-tops-their-peppers/?p=1270296
 
Yes, this is what I meant by a lower, bushier goal plant shape. Wanderer's plant is just way too tall, whereas Hybrid's is perfect.
 
Not saying you did anything wrong Wanderer, just that unfortunately that plant had structural failings that explain your results.
 
Next season will be better. ;-)
 
Horrux said:
Yes, this is what I meant by a lower, bushier goal plant shape. Wanderer's plant is just way too tall, whereas Hybrid's is perfect.
 
Not saying you did anything wrong Wanderer, just that unfortunately that plant had structural failings that explain your results.
 
Next season will be better. ;-)
Click to expand...
 
     What I'm trying to say is that CW's plants just had bad structure. The height of the plant is irrelevant. That chinense in the center of that linked pic in my last post is over 5' tall. It survived several severe thunderstorms and made it to maturity to produce pound after pound of fruit without any damage.
     But this plant was almost killed that same year when it was only about 3' tall.
5KEVb3A.jpg

 
 
 
 
     But thanks for considering my plants perfect!  :party:
 
Hybrid Mode 01 said:
     I don't think it was necessarily the topping that led to your stem failure. Whether or not you top your plant, I find that it helps a lot to prune pepper plants for good structure and branch spacing. For thousands of years, peppers have been selected to produce lots of fruit. Selecting for strong stems was overlooked in the quest for big jalapeno pods. If a pepper plant has any kind of structural fault, it won't take much to cause a failure like you saw.
     Your plant had codominant stems.  https://www.arboristnow.com/news/why-are-co-dominant-stems-so-troubling-
 
 
     Here's a pic of my goal when pruning a young plant.
tCJB8fq.jpg

 
     Notice that there are several lateral branches, rather than just two equal size ones that are fighting eachother for dominance and resources. Also they are all smaller than the main stem, so that no one branch grows too big and exerts too much force in one direction.
 
 
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/58972-who-tops-their-peppers/?p=1270296
Click to expand...
Hey, thanks for the link ..a very interesting read.

This was my first pepper grow and I just cut the top off the seedlings above the 3rd node; after the 4th had just formed (something that works really well with Basil). Since YouTubing on topping, it seems people top the plant a lot further into the growth cycle than I did, do you think this is the reason I had the problems I did?

Looking at your picture above, I want those thick stems but from what I can see the plant doesn't look topped. Is it topped or just well pruned?

I'm just setting up an indoor DWC 8.2 liter per plant grow with very limited lateral space so fat root balls, chunky stems, medium height and small canopy radius is the order of the day. Any pruning tips?
 
 
 
Clueless Wanderer said:
Hey, thanks for the link ..a very interesting read.

This was my first pepper grow and I just cut the top off the seedlings above the 3rd node; after the 4th had just formed (something that works really well with Basil). Since YouTubing on topping, it seems people top the plant a lot further into the growth cycle than I did, do you think this is the reason I had the problems I did?

Looking at your picture above, I want those thick stems but from what I can see the plant doesn't look topped. Is it topped or just well pruned?

I'm just setting up an indoor DWC 8.2 liter per plant grow with very limited lateral space so fat root balls, chunky stems, medium height and small canopy radius is the order of the day. Any pruning tips?
 
 
Click to expand...
 
 
     No problem. Glad you got something out of it!
     Topping your plants may have played a part in the structural problem you saw. When you top a plant with so few nodes, you're making the plant put all of its energy into just a few shoots that are very close to eachother and to the ground. It pretty much dooms (unless steps are taken to improve the situation) all future growth on those branches to be crowded and poorly attached.
     When you leave a plant un-topped, you have many more nodes to pick from when selecting future scaffold branches. Say a plant has 15 nodes below the "Y". If you remove the lowest 1/3 of them (to reduce rain splash and improve air flow), you still have ten more to choose from. Of those, I would still remove about half - to further improve air flow through the middle of the plant and allow more sunlight in. And, as you saw in your plant, proper spacing gives branches room to grow on the stem without interfering with eachother and causing structural defects.
 
     Here's a link to my usual approach to pepper plant pruning. I never top them.
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/58972-who-tops-their-peppers/?p=1269436
 
     For your setup, I would start with that ^ and kind of play future pruning by ear. The amount/quality of light is going to be a key point in any indoor grow. Your plants are always going to be fighting eachother and themselves for solar power. I have the same problem when trying to fit lots of plants into a raised bed. There are always turf wars between plants and the tall, fast-growing plants would always win if I didn't intervene. Try to keep them out of eathothers' space as best you can. And try to keep up on pruning so you're only taking a little off at a time. The goal is to train your plants to grow in the space and conditions available to them - not to just occasionally remove big pieces once they are already out of control. Training a plant to put energy where you want it is better than removing branches once that energy is already invested.
 
Hybrid Mode 01 said:
 
 
     No problem. Glad you got something out of it!
     Topping your plants may have played a part in the structural problem you saw. When you top a plant with so few nodes, you're making the plant put all of its energy into just a few shoots that are very close to eachother and to the ground. It pretty much dooms (unless steps are taken to improve the situation) all future growth on those branches to be crowded and poorly attached.
     When you leave a plant un-topped, you have many more nodes to pick from when selecting future scaffold branches. Say a plant has 15 nodes below the "Y". If you remove the lowest 1/3 of them (to reduce rain splash and improve air flow), you still have ten more to choose from. Of those, I would still remove about half - to further improve air flow through the middle of the plant and allow more sunlight in. And, as you saw in your plant, proper spacing gives branches room to grow on the stem without interfering with eachother and causing structural defects.
 
     Here's a link to my usual approach to pepper plant pruning. I never top them.
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/58972-who-tops-their-peppers/?p=1269436
 
     For your setup, I would start with that ^ and kind of play future pruning by ear. The amount/quality of light is going to be a key point in any indoor grow. Your plants are always going to be fighting eachother and themselves for solar power. I have the same problem when trying to fit lots of plants into a raised bed. There are always turf wars between plants and the tall, fast-growing plants would always win if I didn't intervene. Try to keep them out of eathothers' space as best you can. And try to keep up on pruning so you're only taking a little off at a time. The goal is to train your plants to grow in the space and conditions available to them - not to just occasionally remove big pieces once they are already out of control. Training a plant to put energy where you want it is better than removing branches once that energy is already invested.
Click to expand...
Thank you, again :-) ..awesome fruiting on those plants in the link.

Do you ever FIM?
 
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