Most of these flowers fell off on their own, while a couple of them fell off when I barely grazed them with my hand. What is the deal? Thankfully most of the flowers do become peppers. And is it bad to gently remove the petals from the pepper after they have separated from the rest of the plant?
by Bodidly0719
2 Comments
Lots of reasons. The plant “knows” how many peppers it can support based on factors like nutrient availability, physical structure, temperature/humidity stress, etc. Generally they will abort flowers that they cannot support fruiting or flowers that were not pollinated.
I’ve always assumed it was pollination success, this year I put the plants outside and it turns out that the local insect population are infinitely better at it than I am with a paint brush 🙂