I finally stopped burying my pepper stems, and a guy at the Richmond plant swap called me out for it

Rowan Gonzalez · 2026-10-09T10:00:04.472944+00:00

I used to plant my peppers at the same depth as the nursery pot because that's how my mom did it in her raised beds back in Ohio. At a plant swap in Richmond last month, this older guy watched me pot up a jalapeno and asked why I was leaving half an inch of stem above the soil when tomatoes get buried deep. Turns out pepper stems rot when they touch wet soil, no roots ever form, and I'd been stunting plants for 3 seasons without knowing it. My 2 surviving peppers from that batch are now 8 inches taller than the ones I buried, so the evidence is sitting on my balcony railing. Has anyone else had a random stranger at a swap fix something you'd done a certain way your whole life?

Librear

Loading…

I finally stopped burying my pepper stems, and a guy at the Richmond plant swap called me out for it | Balcony Veggie Gardens - Librear