This gardening season I decided to try something I had seen on a YouTube video. I planted a baby bell, or maybe it was a Nordello, occasionally I had the thought they might be lipstick peppers. I had saved the seeds from some peppers I bought at Sam's that were labeled Baby Bell Peppers that didn't look like Baby Bell Peppers. Whatever they were they were delicious and they grew back true so that means they weren't hybrids. I put two in a planter and buried it about halfway into the ground in my front yard.
When they were about 4" high I pruned the main stem. Those little suckers branched out twice and twice more and was the most prolific pepper plants I have ever had. I put the same amount of nutrients and compost on all of them. My unpruned Ca Wonder and anaheim peppers were just struggling along and had low production. So, I'm a staunch believer in pruning to increase production. My scientific mind, which MUST have the answers of why, reasons like this: You prune the plant, it senses it has been insulted, and thinking it might die soon it goes into super output mode because it thinks it needs to make all those seeds before it perishes.
But it doesn't perish, it just keeps producing! And if you think plants don't think you just watch a pea vine grow everywhere but where you want it to grow. But that's another subject for another time. I shall prune my peppers forever.
laurencortina
HBLovely49