To pinch or not to pinch

[lurley]

I've always started my peppers and tomatoes in peat heavy starting mix and never had any problems, the fact that they have grown so quickly this year as compared to past years is what caused my concern above as the earliest are now over a foot tall above the soil line of their pots. The stems are at least 1/4 inch thick so they are not especially leggy, just don't want them to grow to tall too fast and get that way.

[b54red]

I've never pinched the center growth tip on a pepper before but I almost always pinch off the first set of blooms and if the plant is still small I will pinch off the second set of blooms. I have had to wait before to put mine out and set out plants over 15 inches tall with no bad results and they were in standard 12 oz. coffee cups til plant out.

[franzb69]

if you pinch the top part of the plant, it will just branch out and bush out. if that's what you want to happen, go ahead. =D

[Stepheninky]

From my experience the ones in a high peat mix over 50% peat will start out growing slower and can have some issues if it is a hard to germinate variety.

I actually used both the pod method and grow plugs that are sponge like made from fir tree bark and the plugs did have higher germination and are much taller than the jiffy peat pods.

The ones I transplanted of both though once in the new potting mix seems to be fairly equal as far as new growth is concerned so not sure it makes a huge difference.

Though I guess with some of the hard to germinate or rarer varieties it might be worth it to use a mix with less peat or add in some bark fines or compost IMHO.

For a comparison of the peat and plugs you can see my youtube video on the difference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLRH0SGLQtE