bde0001
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second flower? help please

I started some of my seeds indoors. But I had them under 12 hours of light so....naturally they started to flower. I do know for sure that pepper plants will produce again a second time and a lot more in fact the second time around but I do not know about tomato plants. Will the tomato plants " re -veg" since I have them planted outside now and it is the start of the season? they have flowers on them now. I just hope they don't die after they flower cause they are wicked tiny plants.

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rainbowgardener
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Depends on variety. But if your tomatoes are indeterminate (which is commonest), they will keep flowering and fruiting all season until killed by hard frost in the fall.

Even determinate tomatoes, which tend to produce most of their fruit in a big bunch and then be done, would not be finished at this early stage.

The peppers should keep fruiting all season as well. If you leave peppers on the plant to get red ripe, it will tend to slow them down from producing more fruit as compared to picking the green fruits off. Peppers are actually tender perennials, which can be brought in for the winter. They won't fruit indoors, unless you have lots of high intensity lighting and perfect conditions, but they can be kept alive and will be bigger and more productive next year.

bde0001
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thanks. Yes, I remember last year my pepper plants flowered twice. The first time each plant produced about 5-6 per plant and the second time around I counted anywhere from 19-23 peppers per plant. If they haad a longer growing season and more water and nutes they would have produced good size peppers the second time around.

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rainbowgardener
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Those are hot peppers then? I've never seen bell peppers with that many peppers on them at once. Bell peppers tend to produce peppers continuously, not in flushes, so the plant will have flowers, tiny peppers, and large peppers on one plant all at the same time.

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vinyl217
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You can also pull the flowers off to prevent fruit set this early and let the plant veg some more. I have had to do this with some hot peppers I started in late Feb. Even keeping them under 18/6 lighting they have started flowering. I pulled off the flowers last year and it did not hurt production at all, maybe even helped since the plants weren't supporting fruit right as they were being planted. I've also removed the first tomato blossoms before and it had no negative effect on overall yields.

bde0001
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thanks for the replies guys. And Rainbow, Yes they were bell pepper plants. Hopefully it will happen again with this crop too, because this time they should have enough time to bulk up all those peppers compared to last year where all my 20 something peppers per plant were tiny.



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