I am an only child. A lot of people think that only children are spoiled or get what they want. That is a stereotype, but what is true is that parents do put a lot of energy into just the one kid.

One of my pepper plants has an only child. I use this term for a small vegetable plant that only produces one piece of fruit. If you notice that your plant is putting all of its effort into just the one "child" / fruit, then you might want to consider cutting it off even if it isn't ripe. This green pepper grew so much and so fast, but nothing else would grow on the plant. We allowed it to grow fairly large, but then cut it off. Since then the tree has flourished. We have now pretty much used this method for all of our plants: Cut off the first fruit, so the plant doesn't put all of its energy into just one early piece of fruit. Only children can be fun, but a large harvest is what you really should want out of your garden.

Sunday morning pepper harvest