04/16/2025
The pruning process can feel risky, but it’s such an important part of plant growth! A few years back we learned the benefit of “topping” peppers (cutting off the growth tip) to encourage more branching and fruit. About a week ago I topped some plants and you can see in the first picture that there’s already some side shoots coming on. Compare to the plants that were not topped, which have no branching at the nodules. Also, some of our peppers have already started setting fruit as can be seen in the third photo but we want them to direct energy to beefing up before they fruit up.
We have found this practice to be helpful with peppers, as you can see an ample harvest of fruit in the final photo! It still makes me nervous to cut off those healthy green tops, and every year I relearn that in gardening we have to trust the process. Seeing as peppers are practically veggie popsicles to our kiddos, having a big harvest is always a blessing!
