Topping vs. Understory Pruning

14 years ago

Its too dark out to take a picture of them right now, but thought I'd share my findings so far.

Earlier in the season I got extra bhuts from a nursery (they were BHUTS, at a NURSERY, for like $3 each, how could I not buy extras?) and figured I'd use them for some experimenting that I wouldn't try on the peppers I couldn't easily replace.

One I topped completely, just left a bit of stem a few inches high. The other I did the opposite and cleaned out the understory and left the top untouched.

How did these two different styles affect the plants? The topped pepper grew like crazy into a nice wide bush. The underpruned one looked rather sickly and did virtually nothing. Granted, the understory one got overwatered due to it being in a big container without adequate drainage (one of those tree containers with the drainage holes a couple inches off the ground to keep a reservoir at the bottom, but with nothing to separate that from the rest of the pot, just means the bottom stayed swampy until I took to tipping the whole thing over every time it rained).

The understory one is finally starting to take off, but nowhere near as vigorously as the topped one did. From this albeit limited sample size, my immediate conclusion is that topping a pepper greatly encourages new growth, while cleaning out the bottoms of the plants removes leaves without encouraging new growth to replace them.

Handy lesson for anyone looking to revitalize a pepper. Lop it's head off and it is apparently quite happy.

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Comments (7)

peppernovice
14 years ago
Interesting findings. This may be helpful in the future. Thanks for the info.
jsschrstrcks
14 years ago
A guy I know has been QUITE successfull in cloning pepper plants using this topping method.

Here is his Grow Log on another forum:

Paul G's Grow Log

he's a good guy.
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esox07 (4b) Wisconsin
14 years ago
This could very well be the case but the process seems to go directly against common sense. I would have a very tough time chopping one of my peppers down to a couple inch stem.

I hope this thread gets some more attention though and if further testing proves to support the theory, I would definitely give it a go (with a spare plant of course). I dont have any this year.

Bruce
Edymnion
Original Author
14 years ago
I don't know, I can think of one good evolutionary reason it might work that way.

With the top gone, the plant probably thinks it has been eaten, so it tries to regrow as fast as possible to make up for lost time before it can be eaten again.

If it loses the bottom leaves, it may think there is a fungal issue or that the leaves have touched the ground and hence shouldn't regrow for the benefit of the plant as a whole.

Dunno, but I know they don't mind being topped. I do it all the time when I'm making them into bonsai and they spring right back.
capoman
14 years ago
Possibly, but would it delay onset of fruit? I inadvertently had this happen recently with a Bhut that had a borer that killed the top half of the plant. The plant does have a lot of lower growth happening, but is now far behind the others that didn't get topped in fruiting. This may be an issue for short season growers such as myself.
Edymnion
Original Author
14 years ago
It would, as the plant would need to regrow to a certain minimum mass before it would attempt to flower.
Edymnion
Original Author
14 years ago
There we go, I have pictures.

Understory Pruning:

Drastic Beheading:

Top one is the one I removed every leaf but what was in the crown (two good clusters, start of the Y). Bottom one is the one I chopped down shorter than my index finger.

As you can see, the topped one bushed out substantially, while understory has just recently replaced the leaves around the bottom.

Note, these were the same size when I bought them, and they were pruned at the same time. Note that the topped one has open flowers on it, understory one does not.

So, quit possible that you will get fruit EARLIER by topping them, at least based on this one trial.