Now normally I'm against caging my tomatoes. I like the plant to reach its largest potential and somehow I don't think caging it in will help that. But in this instance I am caging because the lack of support for the plant in the alley. I won't have anything to stabilize the plant with so I decided lets see how I do. I do have other tomatoes plants growing free range. This plant looks to be doing fine for the moment. We'll see how it gets when it grows beyond the cage.
So I know you are going to think why would I want to cut the tops off my young pepper plant? Won't it die? Won't it hurt the plant? Take this example above of this young Shishito pepper plant. Now you can see with my snips I am about to cut just the top section of the leaves. Below the cut area I still have three levels of leaves. I don't recommend cutting your plant if it only has one set of leaves. Only perform topping when there are more than one set, preferably multiple leave layers. The cut will force growth back to the lower levels making your plant more stable with more lower branches as well produce more fruit. One stalk will be unstable when fruiting and limit production but the topping will add more layers and depth to your plant. This topping exercise can be performed more than once to help make a more dense plant. Some will even go so far as to remove flowers to help the plant grow larger or stronger before producing peppers.

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