What kind of peppers are you talking about? I have never removed blossoms and I always have more peppers than I can handle. However, I always have far fewer bell peppers than other varieties like yellow banana or jalepeno, but I just assume this is because bell peppers are significantly larger than the other varieties. You would significantly shorten your fruiting period if you kept removing blossoms until the plant was some arbitrary size. Also since you are in zone 7 and not a warmer zone you might get a disappointing yield by removing blossoms.

In general, don't need to thin peppers blossoms.

Once in a while, I'll remove some blossoms of an initial set. Usually only do this if the plant is quite small due to a stress factor. If a small plant loads up with fruit/pods, it will kind of shut down and not continue production. The other circumstance to remove some is for any unusually large 1st set. In that case if all set, some will be mishappen as get caught in the branches or all small.

Can't remember doing hot peppers. As mentioned, bells produce fewer numbers overall.

Hello all, new to this forum - because new to veg gardening. I live near Cross Country Nurseries, which advertises as offering "the world's largest selection of chile & sweet pepper plants. Tomatoes too!" I picked up a really interesting selection of peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, and basils (mail order is available as well)....the owner's advice for dealing with these small potted pepper plants was to pinch off the initial blooms. The web site also suggests that you can pinch back chile plants to encourage more prolific production.

"Remove all buds, flowers and fruits until you see that the plant has put on good strong growth, or for at least 2 weeks. This may seem crazy to do, but doing so will give you a larger plant just loaded with fruit, versus a small plant with only a couple of fruits."

"My Plants Arrived With Their Tops Cut Off.
What Happened?
Simply put, the chile plant was taller than itÂs transport box. Rather than bending the stem with the possibility of crimping and injuring it, the plant was "pinched" or "topped". While it may look a bit drastic, it actually will improve your chile yield. By taking out the main stem, the side branches are allowed to fill out. Where there once was just one main stem, there will now be 2 or more. Fruit is produced at "nodes", or the section of the stem where a leaf is produced. The more nodes, the more fruit. By encouraging the plant to branch out and have more main stems, you are also encouraging more nodes, and hence more fruit. Many folks routinely do this to their young plants, as they have seen the yield difference between pinched and un-pinched plants. The one drawback however of pinched plants is that the fruit may be produced closer to the ground versus those on un-pinched plants. This means that you might have to bend over more to collect your fruit. For the extra yield, this is a small price to pay!"

The varieties of peppers I'm growing are Buran, Alma Paprika, and Gold -- they are all varieties of sweet bell peppers. I certainly don't want to limit yield. Usually my peppers are out in the garden for about 4 1/2 to 5 months -- I use transplants, but since we are in 7b (NC) it does often stay very warm till the end of October. This is only my second year growing peppers though, and last year I didn't get a good idea of yield because rabbits ate the pepper plants and I had to start over.

Thanks for the suggestions. I like that pinching idea because sometimes my plants outgrow their stakes. I think I will just not remove any more blooms since they decent size when I transplanted them and it's been two weeks.

I am totally non-interventionalist with my peppers, green or hot. I never remove blooms or cut the plants back, and I usually get LOADS of fruit on hefty, hefty plants.

I just make sure they are staked or caged to support the fruit.

You have given me something to experiment with. I will be planting alot of sweet and hot peppers soon, so I will try pinching back some of the pepper plants and see what the over all yeild is between the non-pinched and the pinched. I do see the logic in pinching back for a more stocky and bushy plant. I usually manage to fit in thirty or so plants so even if a few get set back it wont make that big of a dent. If pinching back produces a bigger yeild that means i can plant less peppers and more of something else next year. Thanks for the idea.

Mark

I grow an extremely large amount of peppers, I will have around 300 plants in the garden this year with over 100 different varieties (this is my hobby) I personally pinch all blossoms while growing under lights and at plant out every pepper put in the ground will have all blooms pinched off and get a very heavy dose of Nitrogen. Then I will let them go for a couple of weeks and let more buds form then i hit them with a heavy phosphate fert for root growth and to increase the amount of buds then about every 2 1/2 weeks I give them a mild shot of Miracle Grow. It works for me and I have never lost a pepper plant yet.

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Dale

That's a heck of a lot of peppers! What do you do with them all? Recommendations on good ones to get?

Do you want hot, mild or sweet?

Dale

Thanks for the additional responses. I'm still learning about peppers. podpiper, I can't believe your pepper stash. That's inspiring!

All & any recommendations are fine by me. SO does not like hot, so I won't plant many....Even if I don't plant any more this year than the ones I have already, recommendations for future plantings are always welcome!

These are what I'm planting this year:

Big Red, Blushing Beauty, Chervena Chujski, Georgia Flame, Golden Bell, Lipstick, Little Dickens, Sweet Chocolate, Taurus.