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How to Train Seedlings for Bonchi?

Aloittaja Edymnion, syyskuu 22, 2011, 21:59:58 ip

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Edymnion

With all the fun I've been having getting my Halloween bhut jolokia setup ready, I've ordered some numex halloween ornamental peppers from NMSU.  They're fairly normal ornamental chilis (I presume), except that the fruit is black to bright orange.

I want to make a bonchi out of these, but ornamentals tend to be spindly and bushy by nature, not exactly the best thing for trying to make a nice tree out of.  Right now I've got one seedling and another I just planted at it's base to try and get two stems to fuse with, maybe that will help solve the thickness problem.  Also, when it comes to fusing stems, I've seen that some stems really don't like to fuse, and some just refuse to do it.  Can fusing be encouraged by distressing the stems (rough them up, scar them with a razor blade, etc) so that they will have a better chance at fusing together as they heal?

Anyway, on to my question!
These things like to be short and bushy, I want tall and tree-like.  How can I encourage the growth patterns I want?  I'm assuming the most obvious way would be to simply prune off any low branches that try to grow in order to force the plant upwards.  But with ornamentals being a determinate (again, I presume, never grown ornamentals before, but if they stop growing in height, they must be determinate, right?) would that be doing more harm than good?

On a related note, I also plan on making this one grow over some ornamentation (I have a nice looking aquarium decoration I plan on using).  I know the basics of burying the decoration directly under the young plant so that the roots will be forced to grow around it, but is there a better way to make sure the roots grow down far enough to cover it nicely?  My first thought was to dig away the soil from the base of the plant a little at a time, forcing roots to move down to keep finding better soil.  Seems a little risky though.  While searching for something else, I found a bonsai site showing how to make an actual tree hug a rock by putting the base where you wanted it, and a little soil wrapped in cellophane to force the roots down out of the bottom.  After they had roots coming out the bottom, they simply planted it normally so that the rock was still above the soil line.  Later, chop it down, peel off the cellophane, and bam, good to go.  Would that be a viable tactic to use on peppers as well, or should I stick to just planting them over what I want and cross my fingers?