Growing a lemon habanero plant indoors. It's looking good, but I'm not sure if it's ready to top? Transplanted it into its final pot a week ago. Should I wait one more week for the roots to set in?
In general, do you top your plants or not? Which way produces more peppers?
by creamulum078
17 Comments
So heres 2 things. Not sure from the picture but this might be a bit small for FINAL pot depending on how long u wanna keep it (indoor it take me over a year to fill up a 4gallon in soil).
Second ima assume youre a fellow weed grower lol… pepper dont need to be top/train (they will “top” themself to make that 4way). This is kind of a smart plant who know what to do and prefer not to be mess with!
Look up the feeding (this is where u can mess with em to push flower or foliage) and work with that otherwise i wouldnt cut anything rly till its basicly a bush
I’m a big believer in letting my plants grow like they would in the wild. Try not to mess with too much pruning etc. just feed them and water them, then I let them be. But that’s just me and I’m far from an expert in growing peppers even though my entire garden is only hot peppers.
What does it mean to top?
Nope. Just let it run.
Much too small to top. You do that if the plants is lanky, to make it bushier and sturdier. I’d remove those bottom leave on the soil though.
I’m on the don’t bother topping team. It doesn’t do much of a difference based on my 4 ghost peppers sample size experimentation. It’s not a great sample but at the end of summer, all 4 plants looked the same. Only difference was the scar.
Topping is something first year amateurs do.
If you’ve got ample light sources, you never need to set your plant back just to make it bushy.
Veteran pepper growers know the more you leave them be, the better the results
I think that even though some people tell you to do it. It sets your plants back a few weeks and may not produce more anyway.
It’s tiny. Let it grow.
I find that topping benefits peppers that grow straight up like jalapeños and serranos. It does help them to bush out a bit more, but also sets them back several weeks, so if you have a shorter growing season it is of no use. This year I have 2 identical half wine barrels with 3 Serrano plants each. One I topped the serranos and the other I left alone. I am going to keep track of total yield through the season.
For plants that are naturally bushy like habaneros and other chinense varieties, I have not personally found topping to be beneficial. Since most varieties are late season to begin with, setting them back 2-4 weeks doesn’t generally improve yield
I did fim ( fuck I missed) on pot plants in high school, got like 5-8 tops on some of them
It will naturally fork out eventually if you let it grow, I’ve topped in the past but it depends on the plant and I probably wouldn’t do it again (for peppers)
Never seen any + by doing it the few times I have tried. Now only reason I cut the top of if they get to tall for the space they are growing in, to minimise damage by wind etc
I would top. But then again I wouldn’t
It will top itself soon anyway. No point stressing the plant unless you planted too early and are running out of space.
I learned the hard way never to top my peppers.
My second ghost pepper I grew I pruned and then topped it when it reached about 6 inches tall, like everyone has said to do, it took around 2 weeks before it began to adapt to it being topped, and was never really right afterwards, it branched outwards in every direction and eventually it replaced the original fork with side shoots.
As it kept growing over the summer I found that doing this seriously stunted it, it took 2 months longer than the first pepper I grew to begin growing peppers and the production wasn’t much different either.
First year without topping I got around 130-140 peppers in late july to early august with plenty of time to get a second batch off it. with topping I got maybe 150-160, but it took until mid October to get them at which time the weather was getting cold and the plant was starting to suffer, I had to start taking it inside to protect it from the cold nights as it grew peppers.
All in all, don’t top it, just prune the large leaves and let it do its thing.
Not to top! Let nature be!