ELi5: Can plants be “overweight” if they produce too much food in the similar fashion to how animals gain weight if they eat too much food?

Question

When animals eat too much food, they gain weight. What happens to a plant that produces too much food via photosynthesis? Can plants be overweight?

In: Biology

Answer 1

So one practice that I do with my pepper and tomato plants is called “pinching” and this basically stops the plant from producing fruit too soon. It allows the plant to grow bigger and have the potential for more production. I typically pinch the flowers off for the first 2-4 weeks that I see them, or until they reach a size that is to my liking.

For example, last year I had 2 identical fresno pepper plants, grown from the seeds of the EXACT SAME pepper pod. they started flowering at 6 weeks, and I pinched off the flowers on them both for the first 2 weeks, but the 3rd week I let one of them grow its flowers. The other I continued to pinch(because it was in a significantly larger planter). after the 2 weeks following, I let the SIGNIFICANTLY larger plant start producing flowers and quickly thereafter pods.

Smaller plant produced 119 pods that season. Larger plant produced 443 pods that season. Larger plant ended up dying off during the winter. Smaller plant ended up producing pods all throughout the winter and is starting to get back into its major production cycle again.

So there are benefits to both methods.