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Hello fellow growers, i do have a question about habanero stem

I'm currently growing 4 black habanero plants inside under LED lights. First time grower, so i had some overwatering problems at first, some fertilizing problems aswell. Some of the plants do have edema, since i'm careful with water now i suspect my growing room is too humid. Soil dries very slowly and stems stay wet. Anyway i add these pictures of 3 (4th one same) habanero plants. They all have this stem condition, its thin near soil, but looks healthy and thick little higher. I'm worried and would like to know if anyone else experienced something like this. Currently plants are in small pots (2.3 L , so around 2/3 of a gallon), i should have transplanted them earlier, gonna do that in very near future.
 

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     Your plants may have had some fungal problems when they were younger. Microbial attack can cause stem tissue to respond by "hardening" itself in case of future attack. That brown color you're seeing is a direct result of this - the cell walls of the stem tissue near the soil line have been beefed up with more lignin which will help thwart future attacks.
     Now that your plants have outgrown their susceptibility to damping off, they are growing much faster. The problem is that those brown, barky stem tissue cells have lost a lot of their developmental plasticity - they are more reluctant to grow in diameter like the rest of the soft, green stem tissue above it. They will probably catch up eventually, but in the mean time that area could be a weak spot.
     To help strenghthen the narrow spot, your plants need to experience stress that will convince the plant that it needs to physically reinforce the area. Putting a fan on them should do the trick.
 
 
Chilidude said:
When chili gets older, the older stems slowly becomes woody and you can always bury the exposed stem under the soil no problem.
 

     Bad idea at this point. Along with losing their capacity to grow in diameter, those hardened cells have also likely differentiated past the point of being able to sprout roots. Burying them deep at this point would almost certainly lead to crown rot.
 
Chilidude said:
When chili gets older, the older stems slowly becomes woody and you can always bury the exposed stem under the soil no problem.
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Hybrid Mode 01 said:
Bad idea at this point. Along with losing their capacity to grow in diameter, those hardened cells have also likely differentiated past the point of being able to sprout roots. Burying them deep at this point would almost certainly lead to crown rot.
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It is not like you need to bury much of that stem anyway to create some nice support for the plant and even if the stem have hardened up, you can make few shallow nicks along the lower stem and use a rooting hormone to force the plant to start making roots.
 
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     If you intentionally damage the stem in hopes of getting some rooting hormone so soak in and then bury it in soil, you will greatly increase the chances of introducing pathogens, which will only hasten crown rot. Even if you did manage to keep the soil near the stem pathogen free long enough to get a few roots to sprout, any wind on a large plant like that will cause it to move around and snap any developing roots. Also, that movement will constantly be excavating a void around the stem. That void will always be drying out - further limiting the chances that roots will grow there. Not to mention the effects of a root ball that could suffocate because it can't breathe when buried deeper than it had grown to be used to. Deep planting is also a great way to encourage girdling roots (they're also bad).
     I've seen this happen many times before, in other peoples' gardens and in my own back when I was new to growing peppers. One friend of mine ruined nearly his entire pepper crop one season by doing this. It was a shame because he was counting on earning some cash selling peppers at the farmers market. He came to me for help with his diseased, dying plants because he knew I have a background in plant pathology. As soon as I looked at a few of them I saw the problem and asked if he planted them deep. He had.
     Non-suckering woody-stemmed perennial shrubs (capsicums) just shouldn't be planted deep. While it's possible to get away with it when potting up very young pepper plants, there's really no reason to do it. Woody shrubs know how deep their roots should be better than we do.
 
http://extension.wsu.edu/benton-franklin/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/12/Common-Planting-Problems.pdf
 
Maybe the deep planting will not work so good in open soil growing, but i have found it work great in coco coir growing combined with those air-pots. I have not made any cuts or nicks to the stem myself, as i plant them deep when they are still young.
 
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