You also might want to consider these comments from Pepper-Guru which were posted this last season. Part of his argument concerns indoor, pruned plants versus outdoor, non-pruned ones. I'm still undecided on the matter.
"The main mistake I see growers here making is simply treating peppers like marijuana. Pepper plants are in no way photo sensitive and require no specific amount of hours to fruit. There is no "veg and bloom" with peppers. They veg and bloom simultaneously. This entire "veg and bloom" mentality has originated with marijuana growers and as someone who has years of experience growing both types of plants I can tell you, they are not the same. This goes for nutrient regimine as well. Pepper plants require an even NPK ratio throughout their growth cycle. Where as with photo period specific plants, the grower can tailor their feeding to those individual cycles.
Topping and fimming is a technique mj growers use to promote branching and, seemingly more tops. Buds. Smaller but more. I remember the first glog experiments with this from overgrow. Dierwolf and myself comparing different pruning and training techniques, it was all very enlightening. In the end pruning in the mj world is still disputed as to whether it increases yeild. I'm positive of the changes in plant structure but when all is said and done, weight on unpruned plants vs pruned at harvest come out about the same. Instead of one main top and four to five smaller ones, you get 20-30 smaller, longer buds...
Now with pepper plants, there are reasons to prune. But it's not the reason people have placed on the subject. The main reasons are for space issues, light issues, and time issues. If you have plants that are growing up into your indoor lights, or your lights aren't intense enough to ensure a dense canopy (leggy plants). In no way does removing a pepper plants pods ever create more pods. I know I'm gonna turn some growers heads with that statement, even some that are great growers and have made topics regarding the subject. It is, however, pretty simple. No photo period, no vegetative vs flowering, no pruning in hopes of changing yeild...
As I sit here, brew in hand, reviewing my response from earlier, I actually think I covered the main point pretty well. The only other elaborations I may want to add are that I am in no way saying pruning doesn't have its applications in the pepper world. It does, and those applications are geared toward indoor growers, ornamental growers (bonchi too), and those who are starting indoors to go outdoors or bringing indoors from outdoors(overwintering). These applications just aren't for maximizing yield! Think about it. Indoor growers are limited in root zone volumes, foliage space, light intensity, etc. Indoor growers are constantly moving things around, transplanting, and chasing behind the plants. Most pruning done indoors is for changing leggy plant structures in small containers under fairly weak, artificial lighting. The plants are only going to be able to do what the "container" allows them to do. No indoor grower is going to, or ever has, produced more fruit on a plant than the same one outdoors in the ground; No matter how much pruning or flower picking is done. There are valid points to be made about stalling a plant from fruiting by pruning when you are waiting on something. Bigger container, transplant outside, etc. Does pruning let more light in? Of course, again, another valid point. However, think about the intensity of the light of the sun...it has no issue penetrating the canopy and triggering all those leaf nodes to go BOOM! Again...you see were are chasing mother nature. Most growers don't own HID lights so over time, there are little tricks we develop in order to manipulate the plants into being aesthetically pleasing to our "growing egos". Think about the way a pepper plant grows...look at pictures or watch one over time. The nodes are the bud/flower sites. Pick the flowers there and thats it...they are gone. Never to return. Then the next node up, the same thing. Now you can make the point that more pruning = more branching=more nodes=more flowers...right? Yes. But again, if the plant has everything it needs and is growing under optimum conditions it will branch out and get WAY bigger than any indoor, manipulated specimen. With peppers, bigger really is better. If growers started thinking in terms of trying to grow the biggest plant possible then the conclusion to this debate would come much sooner.
I've done all the pruning, bud picking, fimming, lst'ing, scroging etc that you can think of! Its fun to mess around with the plants, but in the end, I've come to terms with the wisdom and wonderment that is mother nature. You can't outdo it. A naturally growing, healthy, vigorous plant with plenty of root space and a great soil food web, is the only thing thats gonna PUMP out the pods."
