This is my first grow and my plants are healthy and doing well. They are about 6-10 inches tall and are starting to put out flowers. My question is should I pinch them and let the plants concentrate on growing bigger or should I leave them alone and let them do whatever they are going to do. They are about 6 weeks old and growing indoors under t5 lights.
-
If you need help identifying a pepper, disease, or plant issue, please post in Identification.
should i pinch flowers
- Thread starter keyown1
- Start date
Only pinch loafs not flowers 
- what kind of plants?
- what kind of plants?Indoors or outdoors? When does your growing season end? Some people pinch and others do not, I never pinch my flowers.keyown1 said:
you're in texas and i'm in miami, so we might be in similar situations. I have small plants like you and they are producing flowers. I pinch them off as much as I can until they're big and ready to be put into big containers. I go from solo cups to 1gals then to 15gals. Id say let them get to about 2ft in the 1gal and stop pinching and then put the in bigger pots. mine are doing wonderful outside but it's too hot for some of the flowers to set, so i'm waiting for it to cool down. if it gets too cold for you, since you're using pots, you can bring them back inside
Yes those are very small and do not look 6 to 10 inches tall.
I'm no expert. Have only seriously (to me) grown peppers for the past 5 years. I used to mess with pinching flowers, topping, pruning leaves. And the past two years I just left the plants alone and let them do what they naturally do. And in my experience my untouched plants do just as well as my messed with plants. I get great branching, full foliage, good growth, great pod production. Not to mention, I've killed a few plants by being a bit too aggressive with topping and pruning.
Some people swear by all those techniques, I personally just haven't found them necessary.
Some people swear by all those techniques, I personally just haven't found them necessary.
I normally just let them go but this year I decided to top the hell out of my plants because we were getting 90+ temps for a few weeks and the plants would wilt during midday even when soil was moist. Not to mention any flowers would drop as well. I figured the roots weren't capable of providing enough moisture and so cut back by about 50% of greenery. Killed any chance of early harvest but the new growth is coming in nicely and temps are now in the mid 80's so flowers are turning into pods.
Totally agree. Experimentation is the fun part about pepper growing. Because at its heart growing peppers is an optimization game. There is an endless list of stimulus you can tweak, and different stages of the growing process, with the end goal of producing as many pods as possible. And finding what works for you is the fun part.
Another thing to consider when reading how other people grow their peppers is take into consideration where they live. The way some guy in Texas amends his soil or waters his plants is gonna be totally different from what works in Seattle where we get shorter growing seasons and usually a lot of rain.
Another thing to consider when reading how other people grow their peppers is take into consideration where they live. The way some guy in Texas amends his soil or waters his plants is gonna be totally different from what works in Seattle where we get shorter growing seasons and usually a lot of rain.