How to Prune to Make Giant Pepper Plants, Growing in Windows and Fighting Fungus Gnats

What a fun filled episode! Much like the rest of you eagerly awaiting warm enough weather to plant outside our grow rooms and grow lights are over crowded. I had to move some of my plants upstairs into a window. The sun is more more powerful then the best grow light so I hardened all of my plants off. I spent a few days slowly allowing the plants to get more and more light. It is important to note when picking a window you want to select a South or Southwest facing window that gets 8 or more hours of direct sunlight. I make sure to turn each plant 1/4 every few days and keep a fan on in the room.

Even with all of the great planting tips you may end up with pests like fungus gnats. With out their normal predators outside they can take over your house quickly. This year I got fungus gnats and they were everywhere. Fungus gnats are not harmful to your plants… I think. They feed on the fungus that is left on top of your soil. I am fighting them quite successfully three ways. the first is a drop of dawn soap when watering. the soap helps kill their eggs and keeps working. Sticky yellow tape is the second followed up by 2cm of crushed glass from the greenhouse. the glass keeps the adults from getting to the soil to feed and reproduce.

I have been so impressed with my pepper pruning experiment ! The monsters have to be at least 60 – 75cm tall (roughly 2 feet) that said I want to continue to work on the internal structure to hold huge weight and then the root system. When you are pruning the larger plants you may want to keep the following in mind.
1. Remove the flowers as they come prior to letting the fruit set. Removing them will help keep the plant focused on the development of roots leafs and stem.
2. Remove growth that is crossing the center and select nodes that will go outwards. That will help keep the plant from shading itself and helps the air get to all areas in the plant preventing disease.

If you missed the first two parts of this experiment please take the time to view them. The links are below. I go into much more detail in these videos.

Part 1: http://youtu.be/BJ5PEFFo88I
Part 2: http://youtu.be/43l88CAaEOk

About Stephen

The Alberta Urban Garden Channel hopes to promote organic gardening that is simple, sustainable and does not have to cost a lot. We do this by investigating the Science behind gardening, methods, practices and products to make sure that you will have the best chance of successfully growing your own food at home.

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