Last year at the end of the year, I bought a pepper plant that had some blooms on clearance. My thought was that I could put it inside and have some peppers over the winter. Well, I never did replant the pepper plant into a bigger pot, so all I ended up with is a spindly pepper plant. The top looks good and there is new growth coming in at the bottom, but there is a good six inch space that has no leaves, it is just stem.
I did some reading and found that spindly pepper plants was a result of overcrowding – which a pepper plant kept in a four inch pot for several months most definitely is – but I also found out that if a plant is spindly, you can plant it at a deeper depth, and unlike some plants, where the stem will rot, like in most plants, the stem of a pepper will grow roots. This made me wonder if I could put dirt around the stem that has no leaves and when it grows roots divide it into two plants (and this time repot it or put it outside).
What I did was take a plastic sandwich bag and cut a slit in the bottom just big enough to fit over the top part of the plant. I slid it down the plant over the top, then secured it with a twisty tie, making sure that the slit I cut was completely closed. Then I filled the pouch it made with potting soil, then added water to wet the soil just enough to make it damp. I then gathered the top and added a second twisty tie to hold the dirt and moisture inside.
My goal is that this will hopefully grow roots from the stem and I’ll be able to cut the stem just below the bag. This will leave me with two pepper plants, rather than one, big spindly one.
The bag of dirt made the plant a little top heavy, especially since the pot is just plastic. So I rested it against the windowsill that the plants sit near.