David Wall/Contributing Writer
We’ve all heard about early and later season pruning of tomato plants, but pruning pepper plants? Actually, though, trimming can improve pollination, with the increased air, water and sunlight resulting in increased plant and fruit growth.
Examine your pepper plants by bending over to look at the plants below canopy level. Can you easily see through the plants to those in the next row? Is the foliage so dense, it’s difficult for honeybees and other pollinators to get to plant flowers? When you allow branches and leaves to grow without limitations, it makes pollinators’ jobs much harder. Selectively pruning opens the plant and improves pollinator access while strengthening the remaining limbs.
As for where to begin pruning, start below the top canopy level. Quite simply, you don’t need foliage at the bottom. For small pepper fruit varieties, trim up to 8-10 inches. For larger fruit varieties consider 12-18”. Make sure your cutting tool is sharp and has been sterilized to prevent transferring disease. It’s too late this year, but next year, when the plant reaches 12” in height, trim the bottom 4-6”.
Light trimming in the middle plant areas can also help. Again, just make sure you’re opening up the plant to air flow. The objective is to keep the plant from becoming overgrown with foliage. Middle plant trimming can help, but the main emphasis on trimming is at plant bottom.
Also, consider is removing early first fruits. When pepper plants are young and growing, any initial fruit that forms should be removed. Plants at this stage need to put their energy into growing. Having to nurture fruit takes plant energy that should be put into plant growth and more flowers.
Finally, make sure you support each plant by staking or caging to contain and help support fruit laden branches.
Tomatoes
One major, but often overlooked way to keep your tomato plants healthy is to prune or trim underneath them. If you stay on top of this, it only takes a few minutes to complete, but if you’ve done nothing up to now, it could be a several hour process. Trimming can make a huge difference in both the health of your tomatoes, and the number of tomatoes the plant will produce.
Earlier discussions centered on keeping leaves off the soil and trimming sucker limbs on indeterminate plants that come out at the base of a primary limb at roughly a 45° angle – There’s no need to do this for determinate plants. This conserves plant energy, thus making more energy available for fruit production. Still earlier discussions covered early trimming underneath the plant once it reaches 12” in height to allow better airflow and promote growth.
What often occurs, unfortunately, is that trimming underneath soon goes by the wayside instead of continuing throughout the growing season. The purpose is to keep the plant healthy and free from disease. Trimming allows better air flow as well as better access by pollinators, so more blooms get pollinated. It also makes watering easier. It also prevents leaves touching the soil, which is a ramp for pests to walk up to attack upper plant [portions.
Then, there’s always the question of how high to trim and maintain. The amount is dependent of the tomato variety. If you’re growing determinate plants, 10-12” should be sufficient. For indeterminate plants, trim on up to about 18”. Rather than use your hands, use mechanical trimmers that are sharp. If you already have a disease problem, disinfect the trimmer after each plant to prevent spreading the disease.
You DO a have 4-5” layer of mulch for additional plant protection…..don’t you???