I was cooling down my dinner rolls on the balcony with the fan that's reserved for the peppers. When I lifted the wire rack one of the rolls fell straight on the pepper, cutting off the top leaves. The white stuff on the soil is semolina flour. I'm bummed because this plant was already quite stunted, but at least it was just the top pair of leaves and not the whole plant. It's honestly amusing how cleanly it got topped off.
by Nuppusauruss
11 Comments
It’ll be fine! It’ll grow shoots from where the stems of the leaves meet the main stem.
Some people are of the school of thought, that stressing your chillies is actually a good thing. You might just get two stems growing where it snapped.
The flour evidence on the soil is kind of funny. Rolls living up to their names I guess.
So peppers (and plants in general) grow by shooting growth hormone out as far as they can to get bigger.
If you cut the top off a plant, especially at this stage, it forces the growth hormone to look for new places to expand. This process is creatively called “topping”.
There are mixed reviews, but many growers think that while it means your plant will take longer to produce fruit, the fact that the hormone was rerouted out to create new branches means you will have more peppers in the end.
Based on your pic, you couldn’t have done it better if you were trying to top the plant, so you should be good to go. However, to maximize production you will likely need to up-pot it soonish (though it’s kinda hard to gauge how big that pot is)
happy little accident.
My dumb drunk ass did this to a jalapeno last year. It grew perfectly fine afterwards 🤷♂️
It will grow two new shoots where the stem meets the main stem. So you just bushed it out a bit instead of letting it grow tall.
it’ll just bush out more. you might actually get more peppers
Tape it back on
My ghost pepper got hit by a falling cactus and was topped. It’s growing out just fine now. Super bushy
peeled his muffin cap back, blue
This is how a lot of companies will send starter plants, you can expect new leaves to form where the branches meet in a couple weeks. It’s not bad for the plant, just makes it grow more bushy, rather than tall.