you're. always gonna get the dwarve's with to many flowers it always happens. the plant is only capable of supporting so many normal pods. any attempt to tweek this results in a certain amount of pods ripening small. i've tried to push it several times by pruning and the result is the same every time.
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pics Selective pruning to increase crop experiment w/pics
- Thread starter LGHT
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I do bi-weekly foliar feedings of 2-3-3 liquid fert and worm team weekly.
Yeah I'm starting to think medium sized pods is the best I can get, but the sheer amount of peppers i'm picking is more than double of what I got last year so I think i'm still getting more crop overall. I have another 20 or so peppers that are almost rip and that's in bad weather.
I really won't know until the weather picks up and the rains stop.
First time all season the weather has been great. The last 2 weeks I haven't gotten any rain or really cold days and the peppers are responding great. Throughout the week I picked a little over 30 peppers most where small, but I did get some good sized peppers. The biggest weighed 4 grams. Now that the weather is heating up i'm going to fert weekly as I still have a lot of flower drop. Although I'm loosing a lot of flowers I still have hundreds of flowers/pods at all time so the plant doesn't seem to be slowing down as a result. Hopefully the next batch will have MORE medium/large fruit instead of the small ones. Overall the weekly harvest was still good with a total of 94.8 grams in peppers.
Here are a few pics.
Here are a few pics.
Well the weather has been much better heating up to a nice 75, but an avg temp of 72-73 most days. Which has really improved the size of the peppers quit a bit. Previously I would end up with 30-40 or so peppers with about 80% of them undersized and 20% normal to medium in size (nickle to quarter size). The last 3 weeks of results is just the opposite. I now have about 40-50 peppers ripening, but almost all of them are at least medium (quarter size) with a few really large ones and about 10 or so peppers around dime size.
I figured the bad weather was a result of the small pod size. Unfortunately I got a weird flash store Sunday night so i'm hoping that won't cause any problems.
All in all the amount of pods i'm picking has significantly increased over the last year. I think next year i'm not going to prune the plant so early in the season and just wait until the rain stops and avg temps are around mid 70's and then i'll prune about 50% of the leaves instead of around 70-80%. I started pruning 2 chocolate habs and i'm getting very good results on those 2 as well.
Some pics of a few pod groups.
I figured the bad weather was a result of the small pod size. Unfortunately I got a weird flash store Sunday night so i'm hoping that won't cause any problems.
All in all the amount of pods i'm picking has significantly increased over the last year. I think next year i'm not going to prune the plant so early in the season and just wait until the rain stops and avg temps are around mid 70's and then i'll prune about 50% of the leaves instead of around 70-80%. I started pruning 2 chocolate habs and i'm getting very good results on those 2 as well.
Some pics of a few pod groups.
My wife took some pics yesterday so I thought I would share a few. Note that all the superhot pots have been pruned 3 times while the others in the ground only once.
This one is a yellow scorp and you can see that all the lower leaves have been removed.
I do have some Red and Choc Bhuts that are just kicking ass in the ground with huge nasty looking pods and massive plant structures. They're very scary looking and not quite sure what to make of it yet. The ground is a mixture of sand and 4 yr old cow manure, the pots Lambert 3M. I juice them all the same with progrow and noticed that some of the species flourish in both while the others seem to prefer one or the other. Someday I'll need to keep a log on their progress and preferences, but not this year.
My greatest need was irrigation and I remedied that with the installation of drip-tape and a 500 gal water tank. Drip-tape is definitely the way to go and I will incorporate it into everything next season including the pots.
Next season I'll be able to focus much more on my pruning regiment like the previous year. I've noticed that in most cases pruning promotes plant structure growth and larger plants produces more pods.
This one is a yellow scorp and you can see that all the lower leaves have been removed.
I do have some Red and Choc Bhuts that are just kicking ass in the ground with huge nasty looking pods and massive plant structures. They're very scary looking and not quite sure what to make of it yet. The ground is a mixture of sand and 4 yr old cow manure, the pots Lambert 3M. I juice them all the same with progrow and noticed that some of the species flourish in both while the others seem to prefer one or the other. Someday I'll need to keep a log on their progress and preferences, but not this year.
My greatest need was irrigation and I remedied that with the installation of drip-tape and a 500 gal water tank. Drip-tape is definitely the way to go and I will incorporate it into everything next season including the pots.
Next season I'll be able to focus much more on my pruning regiment like the previous year. I've noticed that in most cases pruning promotes plant structure growth and larger plants produces more pods.
Pepper-Guru
Extreme Member
Great looking garden! Nice scale too 
Thanks that's what 500 superhots look like and takes a lot of work to get here.
Lordy Lordy look at that back 40!!!!!
I wanna pack a lunch and come walk in your garden just to get the vibe.
I can sure use the help!!
Great looking pics superhot, but if you look at my original pics I don't have any leaves over the size of a silver dollar again when I say pruned I mean remove 75% of all the leaves. The first pic I put up looks like a bunch of twigs for a few leaves. Yours still look like you need to do a LOT more pruning based on the article I read.
Again the goal was to have very few leaves on the plant which would allow the plants energy to focus on fruiting.
Why don't you take 1-2 plants and prune every leaf over the size of a silver dollar and record the amount of fruit it produces in comparison to one that hasn't been pruned extensively.
Again the goal was to have very few leaves on the plant which would allow the plants energy to focus on fruiting.
Why don't you take 1-2 plants and prune every leaf over the size of a silver dollar and record the amount of fruit it produces in comparison to one that hasn't been pruned extensively.
I've already sustained a couple of storms earlier in the season that stripped all but a few leaves which you would never know to look at them now. We only prune about 50% of all the leaves each time. I already have some plants overloaded with pods now and don't think it would be a good idea to weight them down anymore than they already are. The leaves grow back so fast that by the time we circle back through you can't tell that they were ever touched.
I grow in a 4 zone climate region without a greenhouse or any over wintered plants "just don't have the room". I do believe my plants have benefited with our pruning program. It would be nice to be retired and dedicate more time to the garden, but it's just not possible.
Would you like to see some of the heavily fruited superhots?
Yeah I hear you on the overloaded with pods problem. After significantly pruning another plant the amount and size of the pods went through the roof. I actually lost 1 branch this weekend on fatalli plant because it had over 20 HUGE pods and the single branch just couldn't hold the weight. As a result I've had to tie a few other loaded branches to the patio for support.
I guess you won't be able to complete the 80% pruning of leaves test, but at least you did see an increase in productivity. Luckily the branches on my over wintered plants are a lot thicker and don't seem to have a problem holding hundreds of pods.
That really hurts; they could have been prize winners!!
Fortunately I haven't lost anything like that, but I have piled up my share of large broken branches. I tell myself the resources will go to the branches with the pods. It helps some.
The only way to compare/experiment with this properly would be to grow a plant out so that it is producing fruit without pruning at all. This would be your standard so you know what to expect in terms of fruit size/production and hotness and flavour.
Next you would need to take 2 or more cuttings from this plant all at the same time (and roughly the same size and from a similar area on the plant which would encourage root development at similar speeds)
You would now have 2 (or more dependent on how many cuttings you took) genetically identical plants/seedlings (your cuttings)
These would then need to be planted in identical medium (ideally the same soil/pot or a hydro set-up with identical feed regimes and under identical/the same lights or the sun if need be so as to get maximum control over all the variables)
You would then need to grow these out pruning one/some and leaving the other/s and compare the results.
The more you grew out in each group (pruned/not pruned) the more accurate assessment you could make on the effects of this technique.
You can't compare 2 genetically different plants (from separate seeds even from the same parents) with any degree of certainty as the genetic make-up of each plant would have too much of a potential influence on the outcome.
Interesting all the same and well done on exploring this as much as you have done, it certainly looks like it could have some influence.
Not sure if you understand the experiment. This isn't research for my Horticulture & Agronomy PhD and obviously it's not designed to prove a scientific theory, it's a simple at home comparison based on a article that showed significantly pruning of a pepper plant increased it's output. Take it for what it is.
I know it might be hard for you to realize and understand the concept, but lets say I got 1lb of peppers last year from a plant and now get 10 lbs of peppers after the pruning. 10 is more than 1 so pruning = good.