• Do you need help identifying a 🌶?
    Is your plant suffering from an unknown issue? 🤧
    Then ask in Identification and Diagnosis.

Premature terminal buds?

After having a good initial two months with my new babies I noticed that a couple of my chili plants have developed buds.
Sounds great, right? Well, the issue is I think the buds are of the terminal variety(I hope I use the terminology right).
They seem to be at the top of the stem and I'm afraid that this will kill the potential height of the plants. They are currently roughly 9" high and they can be up to 31" in height.
I have noticed buds on several species but the most prominent ones are on my Bulgarian Carrot plants.
 
Is this something I should worry about?
Is there something I should do about it?
 
Here's an image from one of the plants(Bulgarian Carrot):
sAchuKG.jpg
 
They are not "Terminal". There will be new branch growth among the buds.Wait a few more days and when you see the new growth carefully slice the buds off with a razer until you are ready for buds to develope
 
Just to add a bit of data to help you decide what to do.  Last year I cut the buds off half my young plants and left the buds on the other half as an experiment.  In the end there was no noticeable difference between the plants when they were fully grown, both in size, branching, or pod count.  This year I'm not bothering to remove early buds.
 
A lot of those flowers are going to fall off anyways. Until the plant figures out what it's doing. At least mine do.
 
I'd let them do their thing.... My experience, most of the first buds either don't survive to flower, don't have pollen.... My first season, I pinched the first few buds off one plant and left them on the other.... End of the season, there was no difference, but the one I pinched had bigger yields later on in the season. The unpinched had smaller yields but had more yields during the season, if that makes sense....
 
I'm glad you asked this question. I noticed what looked like buds on a few of mine, which was very surprising since mine are only roughly 13-16 cm tall (5-6"). Based on the advice here I think I'll just leave them to it, not bothering to pick them off. 
 
Back
Top