Pepper picking
Pepper picking is an integral procedure when growing a vegetable crop, if you want to get a good harvest and vegetables of the correct and beautiful shape.
Pepper picking
Purpose of the procedure
Grasshopping is a manipulation aimed at obtaining the maximum possible yield of vegetables, including bell peppers. This is the removal of unnecessary lateral processes from plants in order to provide the fruits with adequate nutrition and the direction of all the forces of the vegetable crop for their formation.
For which varieties is it necessary
The main role in the process of pinching peppers is played by the height of the plants. It is impossible to do without this manipulation of pepper bushes, which belong to tall and medium varieties, and regardless of the place where the vegetable crop is grown: in a greenhouse or in the open field.
Grassing pepper bushes is one of the means of solving the problem of plant thickening, in which densely growing plants lack light.
Gardeners rarely decide to spawn peppers of undersized and dwarf varieties, since this procedure is useless for them in most cases. This is due to the fact that low pepper bushes do not have strong shoots: they are often weak, infertile and do not affect the nutrition of the central vegetative part.
Greenhouse Pepper Procedure
When growing sweet peppers in greenhouses, the pinching procedure begins with seedlings and continues for rooted plants.
Seedling
When the grown seedlings are transferred to the greenhouse, the initial pinching is carried out as soon as its height reaches 15 cm. First of all, the upper points of growth are removed from such seedlings, which makes it possible to enhance the branching process and give impetus to the correct formation of young plants.
Mature plants
Removing excess shoots will increase yields
In heated greenhouse spaces, pepper bushes grow more sprawling than on open soil, so they require careful removal of excess shoots, which includes:
- cutting off side shoots,
- removal of the first flower bud,
- removal of tops.
Cutting side shoots
The pinching scheme involves the selection of the 2 strongest shoots from among the main ones in the first order. Usually, to the formed ten leaves on the entire stem of such processes in the first tier, there are about 4 pieces. Delete everything except the selected 2.
After the performed procedure, branching and growth of shoots of the second order and subsequent ones begins, which give a crop. Subsequently, at each fork of the next order, one lateral process is left, and the rest are pinched. Also, only one fruit is left in each internode, the rest of the buds are removed.
Removing a flower bud
The next stage of pinching peppers in the greenhouse is the removal of the crown bud in the fork, since the fruit ripening in this place gives an impetus to the production of a special substance by the bush - an inhibitor that does not allow juicy and large vegetables to develop.
Trimming the tops
The tops on the shoots are removed around the end of the growing season, while leaving the formed ovaries. The procedure accelerates the ripening of vegetables and prolongs the fruiting period by stopping the growth of the bush itself.
Pepper grazing in the open field
The grazing of peppers grown in open soil begins with the removal of the crown bud, which gives better growth and development of the vegetable crop. Only after removing the flower bud at the fork, they continue pinching according to the scheme:
- cut off excess processes on the sides,
- remove unnecessary branches as soon as the number of leaves on the stem reaches a dozen, leaving 2-3 strong shoots,
- cut off the tops of weak processes,
- pluck the shoots located above the first leaf.
Further, the procedure resembles the one that is used for vegetables grown in greenhouses: formed in internodes and sterile buds are removed.
Additional recommendations
- Do not spare crown flower buds, even if they did not grow one at a time at the stage of growing pepper seedlings. Removing them activates the growth and development of seedlings even faster.
- The growing season of the pepper culture grown in greenhouses is longer, therefore, it is possible to cut off not only the lateral shoots, but also the leaves growing on the central stem.
- The last leaf removal is carried out 1.5 months before the expected ripening of the final harvest. For plants, pinching is a kind of stress, after which the sweet pepper recovers for some time and delays the ripening of the fruit. 45 days is a period that is enough for the last vegetables to form and ripen before the gardening season closes.