Repairing Broken Chilli Plant Branches

Repairing broken chilli plant branches is something that we all have to do from time to time. No matter how much love we give our plants, accidents do sometimes happen. Or, random acts of Tomato Plants.

This year the main nemesis to my plants hasn’t been Aphids, it’s been the wind. We’ve had a bad time of it in the North West of England with the weather. I’ve barely had my plants outside compared to last year. On the few occasions I’ve left them out I’ve normally had cause to regret it.

The wind has knocked most of my plants over at some point. And, what can happen when a plant falls over? Yup. Their branches can snap.

Particularly annoying when that branch is carrying fruit.

At this point you can cut your losses and gently finish the job, or, you can try and fix it.

Not being one to give up on something so easily, I try and fix it.

The break on this branch was quite low down, and as you’ve seen it’s got a couple of heavy fruits on it.

Using an ordinary wooden meat skewer I created a splint for it. As it was quite a heavy branch thanks to it’s fruit I staked the splint into the soil and made sort of support for it at the same time.

It worked pretty well. If it’s not practical for you to do this then you don’t need to stake them, just try and take the pressure off in any way you can.

The next thing I did was to tape the branch to the stake. In the past I’ve used electrical tape for this, but with it being so low down and needing better support I used gaffer tape.

Next I used another wooden stake to further strengthen the splint, again using gaffer tape to give a strong and secure fastening.

With the splint in place the branch is back to it’s normal position.

Hopefully what will happen now is that the plant will knit itself back together and it will carry on as though nothing was wrong.

Well, fingers crossed at least!