Are you struggling to grow large and robust bell peppers in your home garden? Look no further! Gardener Calvin from Geeky Greenhouse has shared a TikTok hack that might just solve your problem.
While having a fruit and veggie garden is a fantastic way to control what you eat and provide fresh produce for your family, sometimes the results may not meet your expectations. Despite your best efforts in fertilizing and watering, your bell peppers might end up small and disappointing.
Bell peppers are a popular choice for home gardens, known for their size and flavor. If you're tired of harvesting tiny peppers and want to see them grow bigger, Calvin's TikTok hack suggests pruning off the weakest links.
Leave up to ten pepper fruits per plant
According to the TikTok gardener, survival of the fittest is the name of the game in the bell pepper world. The pepper fruits on a plant tend to compete with one another. When there are a multitude of fruits on a plant, there will be serious resource allocation so all the bells get fed. By plucking off some of the weaker or smallest ones and leaving the ones with the most potential, you can trick the plant into diverting those nutrients toward the remaining fruit, so they grow into sizable bells. According to observations published by the University of Delaware, this practice is justified.
The task is straightforward — remove most of the smaller bell peppers that you feel won't reach a desirable size. In the video, Calvin clears out the pepper plant and leaves about six to ten peppers to flourish without any competition. To do this properly, just yank the smaller fruit by its stalk off the main stem. You don't need any gardening tools for this hack, just a sharp eye and an intuitive mind to know which peppers make the cut and which get the boot. Once harvest season rolls in, you should see the chosen peppers fattened up and ready for picking.
Your plant size and climate will determine yield size
If you have a hard time deciding which peppers should be plucked and which should be left on the plant, you can keep an eye out for ones that are deformed. A strange-looking fruit will keep looking strange as it grows. Peppers that are stunted should also get evicted. They likely won't grow very large anyway. Also, fruits that have ripened prematurely need to go. The sooner you do this, the better because you will be making room for stronger, healthier pepper fruits to emerge.
The size of your bell pepper plant is directly proportional to the size of your harvest. If you are growing your peppers in a pot, you have to make sure that pot is large enough to contain the root spread, as TikTok garden creator Calvin points out in his comment section. He explains that for your pot to be sufficient, it should easily contain 5 to 10 gallons of soil. The creator also notes that, from his experience, the peppers do better when allowed to grow without ceasing which would mean growing directly from seed.
Bell peppers prefer warm temperatures so living in a cold region may affect the size of the fruit you see during the harvest period. The plants thrive in soil with a temperature ranging from 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The TikTok creator duo Geeky Greenhouse gardens is in hardiness zone 6a which sees a temperate climate with chilly winters and hot summers.
The Importance of Proper Spacing for Pepper Plants
Ensuring the health and productivity of your pepper plants relies heavily on how you care for them. Bell peppers thrive on sunlight, requiring a minimum of six hours of exposure each day. Additionally, they benefit from nutrient-rich soil, making fertilizer a crucial component of their growth. One common mistake many gardeners make is planting pepper plants too close together. This results in competition for resources within the garden and ultimately leads to a smaller harvest. To maximize the potential of your pepper plants, remember to space them out adequately during the planting season.
For more information on spacing pepper plants in your garden, you can visit this resource.
