chilli

hi
first time to grow chilli's, my plants are about 7 inch tall what i was wondering is do i pinch out the side shoots like you do with tomato's
thanks if you can help

 

No, you want them to bush up. In fact, if they grow straight-up then you should pinch out the top to make them bush out - but that sets them back a couple of weeks, so only necessary if they aren't bushing up by themselves.

 

thanks for the reply kristen(very helpfull) ,i just went out and measured them and i was wrong they are 5 inch's high, so another question if i may. how high should i let them go straight up before i take the top off to stop them growing up! i understand i want them to grow out and up with the branch's so i crop the main stem do i also do it to the branchs as well what i trying to ask is how high the plant should be all over if you can understand me
once again many thxs

 

There are pictures of what my chillies looked like last year on my blog

 

thxs again looking good

 

An alternative to pinching out the top is to tie them down. Its less stressful to the plant so they don`t need the recovery period. This "bondage" chilli produced 8 vertical stems from the nodes and then branched out from those. Nothing says a plant has to grow upwards, sideways is ok too :wink:

 

Interesting idea. Does it make the plant top heavy [on one side] later on though?

 

Hi Kristen
Nope it grows as normal once you let it. The usual side branching grows vertically instead of horizontal and they naturally they go in different directions trying not to shade each other out. It would be a good method to use with a restricted height.
I trained a tomato plant to grow in a flat spiral, 12ft of vine in a pretty compact space. Anything radical or different and i just have to give it a go :wink:

Here`s a plan view of the bondage chilli to show how the leaves adjust themselves into a flat canopy to get a fair share of the light. I think the chilli stem was about 10" in the pic and used about 2" of vertical height.

 

looks difrent duno what to say first time for me to grow them think i will grow them up incase i snap them