Broken Stems

The storm front that produced those awful tornadoes over in Oklahoma came through here last night. Fortunately for us, we got only strong winds and torrential rain, but no serious damage. The wind broke off some of my young, tender pepper plants, though. Most of them, like the one in this picture, are still barely attached at the break. You can see that this one is still alive and has already turned back toward the sky.

My plan is to carefully rake soil up around the stems to cover the broken spot and provide some support - then I hope the plants will recover somehow. Do you think pepper plants like this can be saved? How about the ones that had the stems completely broken off, will they re-grow?

So sorry about your plant.
I did have great success with tomato plants using scotch tape and securing the stem to a pole.
You can try that !

How are they doing, Ozark? What types of peppers are they?

The plant in the picture is a sweet Italian frying pepper, Corno di Toro. I carefully heaped soil over the break and I've been watering it - it looks fine and it's growing. The storm broke another sweet pepper, a Gypsy, completely off about an inch above the ground. It's still green but it only has the two little starter leaves left. With the growth center completely gone, I'm not so optimistic about it.

But - one Bradford pear tree down that I have to cut up with a chain saw, a couple of broken pepper plants, and messy oak leaves and twigs everywhere are a small price to pay from the same storm front that hurt families so bad over in Oklahoma. We were lucky.

I digress, but my two main springtime activities are gardening and fishing, and I'm real busy with both right now. Here's a pretty picture I took from my boat as I was coming in on Wednesday. I love the Ozarks - this lake is 50 miles long with miles of water to myself, and sometimes my rig is the only one in the parking lot. :>)

An update - yes, broken-off pepper plants will regenerate in time, even if the main stem is broken off all the way.

The first picture here is of the Corno di Toro pepper shown at the top of this thread that was broken but still attached. It laid over in the row and caused an uneven spacing between plants, but it's doing fine. After it broke off, I packed soil over the break and it never even wilted.

The second picture here is of the Gypsy pepper that broke off completely with the whole upper plant gone and only two cotyledon leaves left. It's taken a month, but there's now a new growth center and new leaves growing. I think it will be O.K. and still have some peppers this season.

Great I'm glad they are making a recovery. I thought you meant that the broken off part had come back, Ive seen the base come back but not all the time. : )