How to Prune Pepper Plants

Pruning Early in the Season

Use your fingers or small scissor cutters when first pruning your pepper plant. Early on in your pepper plant’s life it may be easier to use your hand, rather than a pruner, to ‘pinch’ off unwanted stems and buds. Pinch the plant at the desired point between your finger and your thumbnail until you feel the stem break. Then gently and carefully remove the unwanted section of the plant. If you prune by hand, dip your fingers into a solution of powdered milk and water when moving between plants. The protein in the milk solution can deactivate viruses and bacteria that might otherwise spread between your different plants.

Begin pruning when your pepper plant is about a foot tall. Remove the top half of the plant, ensuring that a few leaves remain on the plant. At this point the plant should have a sizable root system, which it will use to quickly strengthen the remaining stem and grow new buds. The center stem of most pepper plants will likely look like a ‘Y’ when the plant is this tall. Make sure the point you are pruning from is above this ‘Y’, as this is the base of your pepper plant. Pruning excess foliage at this stage will encourage the plant to strengthen that base.

Cut back excess leaves and stems at each node. Nodes are sections of a stem where new leaves and stems can develop. If these areas look overly crowded, or underdeveloped, prune them back. While it may feel a bit harsh, limiting leaf production ensures that the leaves you do have left are fully developed. It also promotes further stem growth. If you are leaving very few leaves per node early on in the growing season, try to leave a few more as the season progresses. By the mid-to-late growing season, the stem structure should be fairly strong, and leaving additional leaves allows the plant to best use increasing levels of light. These leaves can also provide shade for incoming fruit.

Pruning Later in the Season

Prune out inward-facing stems. As your pepper plants grow and mature, keep an eye out for stems and leaves growing inward toward the center of the plant. Space there is limited and too crowded to support full-sized pepper production. Encourage your plant to grow outwards, especially towards its base. This will also keep its center of gravity low so it is less likely to tip over. Keep new shoots from growing around the base of the stem as well, in order to provide space for peppers to hang down.

Remove the first few flowers that appear. If your pepper plant seems to be growing well, remove the first few blooms that appear. Early flowers that set and begin to grow fruit take energy away from the plant that could better be used to grown the plant larger and sturdier first.

Prune out excess flowers. To ensure that your peppers have enough room to grow, remove flowers that appear at the crown (or top) of the stem, as well as flowers at the first, third, fifth, etc. nodes of the main stems. Pruning out flowers at regular heights not only encourages controlled growth but helps keep your plant from putting all its energy into pepper production at once.

Trim back all non-essential branches a few weeks before the first frost. As the season draws to an end, trim back all the parts of the pepper plant that don’t already have maturing fruit on them. Remove branches with flowers and any peppers unlikely to ripen before the frost. This ensures that the plants remaining energy is used to ripen and mature your final peppers.