All peppers now starting hardening -- and one has a real Hungarian Sweet pepper on it! -- and pruning notes

To free up space under the lights, all peppers are now downstairs and in various stages of being hardened.  Will take things gradually for sure, and they won't actually be planted for QUITE a while yet.

One of the Hungarian Sweet plants has a pepper on it!  I let it be.

As for pruning, I've been pruning pretty much all peppers (sweet and hot) by necessity due to limited vertical space under the lights.  Most plants look pretty darn good, and some look downright amazing!  I'm not deliberately removing any flowers unless by virtue of pruning.

Topped hot peppers (the bigger ones) and accidentally one hungarian sweet pepper; and pruned biggest stevia

Topped half of the store-bought peppers

Topped 4 of the 9 green peppers, 4 of the 9 sweet banana peppers, and the 1 hot pepper.  Though the hot pepper was already quite bushy -- but I topped it anyway.

(I already topped all of my home-grown peppers a while ago but it hasn't helped with bushiness for them yet -- they all look so wimpy.)

Trimming onions (new this year)

 This year I'm trimming the onion tops to see if that helps them bulb up at all.  So, once they get two leaves, trimming occasionally.

Pruned and un-tulled more zucchinis; most zukes are quite shaded

Another round of pruning.

Un-tulled two more zucchinis, because my system with the upside down tomato cages has them way too squished at the top.

Between the volunteer sunflower in the central bed, the tall parsley gone to seed in the central bed (much of which I chopped today to remove some shade), the crazy tomatoes, etc., I'm realizing the deck is really stacked against my poor zucchinis.

Zucchini update: Two more flowered, pruned all (except newest transplants), aphids on a/c ronde!!

The two more that flowered are the zucchini north of the air conditioner -- it flowered this morning, and luckily there was a male flower around that I used to fertilize it -- and one in the north bed under tulle which flowered while I was away so it didn't take and I've removed it.

There are some promising ones that I'm hopeful might make it to flowering in the coming days.

Found two aphids on the air conditioner ronde!!!  Far from an infestation, but sheesh, the aphids are everywhere this year.

Gave them all a good pruning, mostly to try to help deter powdery mildew, but also it's helpful to remove some SVB eggs for the un-covered ones.

Tulle + vertical does not seem to be a great combination, at least not with my setup (upside down tomato cages), because the tulle squishes the leaves which become squished/misshapen and can't be very helpful to the plant.  Removed the tulle from one of the north bed ones because it was so hopeless.

The batch of recent transplants are coming along.  Not seeing any zucchinis yet, but I think it won't be long.

Several of the plants are getting shaded by other things.

Pruned lowest leaves of tomatoes and most zucchini/rondes

Just to keep things from touching the ground (tomatoes) and try to keep up air flow to help delay powdery mildew (zukes/rondes).

Next year: Don't prune basil's main stem too early

This year (several weeks ago), I pruned the main stem of most basils at the first junction.  I don't like how this resulted.  Next year, start basil a smidge later to avoid running out of height room too early, then can prune after there are at least two junctions.

Great, simple post/video on how to prune tomatoes

Going to try this method this year, and maybe just maybe avoid a huge tomato jungle.  Never had much luck with pruning tomatoes before, because I didn't know what I was doing.

https://www.creativevegetablegardener.com/pruning-indeterminate-tomatoes/

Basil harvest while pruning! Yum

Quite a nice basil harvest while pruning!  The plants are doing quite well so far, looking vigorous, knock on wood.

Pruned most of the basils, but left a few unpruned for comparison.