Leaves management

[scion]

Many of my super hot chili plants have a lot of leaves. I am thinking to prune the leaves to give more sunlight and air flow. Is it a good idea and have you any experiences of leaves pruning? I would like to get some tips.

Thanks in advance.

Scion

[madblam]

Bump!

I am asking myself the same question. Is there someone to help us?

Thanks

[Toby]

I wouldn't recommend pruning leaves during the summer. The amount and area of plant's leaves makes the plant grow larger. It also enables more pods. More pods means you'll have more to harvest and eat. Autumn/fall would much be better season to prune leaves and branches.
NOTICE: I haven't myself tried pruning at late summer. That means I don't have any experience of it. I THINK it would be a bad idea if you'd like to get more pods but who knows? Maybe someone here has tested this and can give a piece of advice for the two of you.

[.:Dam:.]

I have pruned my chilies several years now but I might have different reason for that. When my chilies have one leaf in branches crotch, I remove that one. And always when branches separates and there is leaf. When I remove these leaves, branches grows a bit faster and bigger. Sometimes I remove all bigger leaves so growing almost stops but then it grows later on faster and more bushy like. When plant is 30 to 50 cm high, I remove about all leafs that grows from stem. When plant gets enough light to stem, it starts to grow more branches from it. Some pictures to clarify what I am doing, click pictures for bigger picture.


Criolla Sella, Starfish and Black Naga. What I am going to do with these in a month or two is to cut those shorter for winter to wait next year. Criolla Sella and Starfish needs support, without support those are vertical and I don't like that. I have high hopes that next year these does not need that much support and these are more bushy and compact as these can be.

Black Nagas branch that grows in about 45° to up left was main branch last year. This summer tiny branch that grows upwards grow to be bigger than main branch.



Jalapeño and new branch. I was about to throw this away in autumn because it is not doing so well anymore. Upper leaves are dying so I am thinking to save this for at least one more year. 20-30 cm stem and rest of plant to bin.

Pictures are not so good because I had other purposes on mind than telling what happens to my plants after leaves management. Plants gets more and bigger branches after removing these leaves but leaves are also smaller.

[scion]

Thank you all for your opinions.

I have several super hot chili plants, some of them look very normal their small branches and leaves and some of them are not normal looking, too much small branches and leaves. So visually if it looks too much I do pruning the plants. Some of the small branches never grow big most of them are in the base stems too.

Scion