SHAVED

[chilehunter]

I never got around to cutting the leaves off my garden chiles, was busy & guess it really didnt matter much because it got down to 32F & 34F 2 nights & dont want to deal with covering/uncovering the garden plants when I still have container plants to deal with. so I just harvested all my garden chiles - to bad most are unripe but I'll live, theres still cap in them

I didn't think this would work tbh and I am kinda hesitant doing it myself.

don't plants need leaves to make food, i don't see how this would work

you're losing more energy than you're saving. you need to cut any *new growth"... not existing one.

I'm no expert but, really what do you have to loose ?
the way I see it is that its close to the end of the growing season & everyone wants the exsisting pods to ripen, correct ?
& we all know newly formed pods will not ripen in the late season, & the plants are gonna die anyways from frost/freezing temps.
so again what do you really have to loose by cutting the leaves off ? the leaves are dieing so why not conserve energy in the plant & send that energy to ripening those pods.

its just a gamble ya take, you can have ripe pods on a dieing plant or unripe pods on a dieing plant, whats the worst that could happen ? you get a bunch of unripe chiles