[CH] wind damage to pepper plants

Jim Graham (spooky130@cox.net)
Tue, 1 Jun 2004 21:11:08 -0500 

Ok....  Last year, I kept a screen around all of my pepper plants
(the idea being to protect them from whatever ate them the year
before...in *ONE DAY* while I was at work).  After I inherited a
number of additional plants (no screens), that were left alone, I
removed the screens this year.  No predators anymore...but.......

*WIND*!  As the usual nightly t-storms move through, they bring lots
of wind---something I never realized before that the screens were
protecting my pepper plants from.  Aside from keeping unsightly green
plastic screens around my plants, does anyone have any ideas for
preventing pepper plants from being blown over (to where they're laying
flat on the deck---i.e., just over 90 degrees) and severely damaged?

Granted, it's only the cayenne peppers that this is happening to (they
seem to be the only ones that insist on being tall, skinny/vulnerable
plants), and not the habaneros, tabascos, priks, chiltepins, or even
the no-heat peppers (banana peppers, jalapenos, and one mystery pepper
that might be some form of aji---big/long...compared to jalapenos/banana
peppers, fat peppers that start off as a deep, dark green, and ripen to
a chocolate brown color) ... but still ... those cayennes, even though
they have basically zero heat, are still quite tasty...and I'd hate to
lose them to the wind......

For now, I've put the green plastic screens back up.  Any better ideas
would be most welcome.

Suggestions?
   --jim

PS:  The other pepper plants have grown to be very thick...to the extent
     that, for example, when I'm checking out habanero row, looking for
     new pepper sign (MST3k ref:  sim. to movie sign), I'll often miss
     peppers that I saw the day before ... but can't find again, because
     the stems/branches/leaves are so thick that they make finding the
     still-green habaneros rather difficult....  This has never been the
     case in past years---reason (I suspect):  per multiple growing tips
     pages, planted all pepper plants much deeper than I had in the past,
     resulting in much thicker, taller, and more productive plants.

-- 
73 DE N5IAL (/4)        | DMR: So fsck was originally called something else.
spooky130@cox.net       | Q:   What was it called?
ICBM / Hurricane:       | DMR: Well, the second letter was different.
   30.39735N 86.60439W  |       -- Dennis M. Ritchie, Usenix, June 18, 1998.