Separating clusterd/crowded fruits vegetables

As I'm starting to get fruit/vegetables in my garden, I'm running into this issue & suspect it will end badly (rot, spot, etc.)

Despite vigorous prunning/trellising/planning, some stuff just pops up too quickly or is concealed by vegetation on the plant & goes unnoticed until it's too late. The close/small SFG footprint seems to magnify the issue (especially on the larger stuff like the tomatoes & bell peppers)

End result is that I've got fruit/veggies that are either touching, or that are going to make contact soon & there isn't enough room to tension/redirect the fruit/veggie.

Is there a certain item, spacer or material that I can insert between the fruit/veggies that is porous, compressable, breathable, inert & won't damage the produce. Most importantly, it needs to stay in place with no support structure, other than opposing (compressive) pressure.

Tenatively, I'm thinking pieces of foam or kitchen sponge, cut-to size & inserted between the contact points ???

Hopefully someone has some experience/advice for this, or can point me at a gadgety-gizmo that I'm unaware of ???

ATM, issue is with Bell Peppers, but I antipate being in the same situation with tomatoes shortly ... and those are even more susceptible to damage/rot

I understand that the only solution may be to "cull the herd" ....but I wanted to ask before I just snipped perfectly good developing produuce off (everything is similar sized & I caught it too late, so this isn't one of those"snip one" to make the others grow bigger situation....).

Again ..tension/slinging isn't an option ...the fruit is co-located & there isn't room.

Hi Acara, maybe can you post some pictures so we can see exactly the situation? I'm no expert by any means but I would venture to say that I would think your climate is good there so it would'nt hurt the veggies to touch? also if I were you instead of trying to put something artificial between the fruits that might be a breeding ground and host a desease , I would coat the veggie with DE and it would help with desease , cause you only water at the base of the plant it could stay there unless it rained. That's what I would do, my plants aren't that tall yet.

This was a week ago (10/9) & the peppers have almost doubled in size since then ..

They look very healthy ! I'm thinking they are just suppose to grow like that and there really is no way to prevent them from growing close together and don't really see a problem with them touching ? :scratch: they don't really look like they are too crowded , but has anyone had a problem from that ? looks like so far so good to me!

I live way up north and my peppers are long gone now, but I didn't have any trouble with them touching. There is enough 'give' on the fruits that they were able to continue to grow without rotting or damaging.

The same held true for my tomatoes when I had a couple touching. Usually in the case of the toms, the larger ones ripened and could be picked before the others so they were removed and out of the way. I never had too many on a branch ripening at the same time.

Maybe I was just lucky.

Hey Acara! I'm up in the Panhandle. We had an incredibly hot and HUMID summer this time around. I can tell you that my tomato varieties that clustered did not suffer damage from touching each other. I had cracking from the bouts with excessive rain we had, but I really can't say there was a problem from the fruits contacting each other. My jalapenos, (that did NOTHING during the summer) are now setting loads of fruit now that its cooled off some. So far they are setting and growing to the size I like to harvest at without any problem. I'd leave them be unless you see a problem.. you may just have a bumper crop !!

Kewl ....... I'm confident that I'm completely qualified & have enough SFG experience under my belt to "do nothing"

... thanks for the input everyone

Veggies can get away from you really fast, and they are sneaky varmints too. I had everything cheek by jowl and didn't have a problem with it. Good luck, sounds like you are having a great crop going there!