Practice Wrapping

While watering my overwintering peppers, I had a thought.  I have a peter pepper (yes, the ones that look like little red dicks) that I grew last summer for someone that just wanted to see them that is of decent size to turn into a bonchi.  I can use it to practice basic root over rocks techniques in preparation for the real project!

   No seriously, they look like little dicks.

No particular attachment to this plant, just didn't feel like letting a unique looking pepper die out in the cold.  Figured eventually I'd figure out something to do with it.  Then I remembered something, I have an old weathered laughing Buddha resin statue from one of my neighbors that gave it to me with the express intent that I use it to make something cool out of.

Buddha thinks its hilarious that I'm going to grow red hot chili peckers on his head.

Don't really have time to go through all the steps of making the whole mold thing like I described in my last post, so I figured I'd try a much simpler version of a traditional wrap method.  Simply position the plant where you want it, spread the roots out nicely, and cover with some soil.

Then, just grab a plastic bag, cut it into a sheet (take off the handles, cut down one side and across the bottom), and some packing tape.

And apparently completely forget to take pictures of the stupid thing after I was done wrapping it.  Oh well, use your imagine here.  Just wrap the plastic around it nice and tight, then mummify it with packing tape to hold it all snug up against the statue.  The plastic forms a barrier that the roots can't penetrate, so they will be forced to grow straight down, and the snug fit on the plastic means any lateral growth will have to be around the statue itself.

Make sure you have at least some roots coming out the bottom of the plastic reaching the rest of the soil so the plant has some idea of where it needs to go.

Now, place your wrapped piece back into about a 2/3rds filled container, and then fill up around the plastic.  This will keep the whole thing steady so that its much harder for the top half with your stone/statue to fall over and damage the small amount of roots coming out the bottom.  The plastic bag and tape going below the soil line will prevent any roots from growing in that area.  Make sure to leave enough of an opening around the top for the next step.

Next, water generously inside the bag!  This serves two purposes.  One, it lets you know if your bag was more or less water tight if it takes a few seconds for the water level to go down.  Second, it helps wash the soil you packed around the statue down, forcing it to settle into all the cracks and gaps it couldn't get into before when you were just hand packing.

Now for the real trick.  From here out, try not to water inside the bag.  Remember, the goal is to get the pepper to grow deep roots trying to find water, and the bag is preventing it from doing that except for the few long roots that we left sticking out the bottom.  If I water only outside of the bag, the only water the plant will have access to should be down deep, so it'll grow roots down to get it, which is exactly what we want.

This does not mean we water that way exclusively.  I will be watching the plant to know how it's doing.  If it starts drooping, I water, and its still drooping the next day, I'll pour some water into the bag because I'll know it hasn't grown enough roots down far enough to get the water otherwise.  The idea is to think of that kind of in the bag watering as life support though.  We don't want it to get enough water that way that its perfectly happy, we want it to have to work at getting the deep water.

Last step is patience.  Lots and lots of patience.  Ideally I will not take this bag off until spring, giving the roots lots of time to grow as much as they possibly can.  Come springtime when its warm enough to transfer this back outside to my raised beds again, I'll take the bag off and pull the soil away.  Hopefully what I'll see will be lots and lots of big strong roots around the statue, and lots of roots down below it as well.  If so, then I can set it all out in the garden with the top roots exposed to the sun and the wind, and they'll lignify (become woody) and thicken up even more as the small feeder roots die off, leaving me with a nice looking piece.

Hopefully.

Thats the nice thing about peppers, the only way to really kill one short of freezing it solid is to keep it constantly overwatered.  They're very forgiving plants when it comes to physical abuse, which is one reason they're so easy to turn into bonsai.