Hi
Fascinated by your bonchis I tried to follow your instructions yesterday and cut down one chinense (chupetinha) and annuum (numex twilight).
Now the stems look promising, only the roots look very thin compared to yours.
Any hints how to thicken them ?
Any hints for next season to grow thick stems ?

I have some baccatums with nice stems, but the first branches are way to "high" so you can not cut them down for a bonchi.

Thanks for your help in advance
Tahooma

Well, the thing is that when I dig up the bonchis, they do have mostly very small roots which are visible.

You have to prune all the small roots and leave only the big ones, there are definitely some a bit thicker ones hiding under the small roots..

During the season, you can thicked and make the roots woody by exposing them to sun, which means you can start digging off some soil and cutting off the smallest roots.

That's what I did here for example:
http://fatalii.net/chile/?u=g&c=search&word=roots&id=6042

Before trimming the small roots, it was impossible to tell if there are any thicker roots or not.

This is how the roots looked like later:
http://fatalii.net/chile/?u=g&c=search&word=tepin&id=6591

Few weeks ago, I cut down this plant from about the middle and I'm trying to grow it to more compact size.
Actually, you can cut down a plant to a single thick stem and let it grow smaller stems later. I do that very often, like in this case.

Hope it helps!

"You have to prune all the small roots and leave only the big ones, there are definitely some a bit thicker ones hiding under the small roots.."
So you mean after digging out the stem after cutting it to "bonchi" size, i should remove ALL of the small roots ?

Will the remaining "few" keep it alive ?

Hopefully, yes.

Of course you can and should leave also small roots to part which is more deep, non-visible.

Remember, always turn more plants to bonchi than what you will keep as some of them will die.

Thanks :)
One last question:
How do you get those "snaky" stems ?
Do you attach some small plants to each other while you grow them ?

Thx

What do you mean by snaky?
If you mean those with multistems, like short yellow tabasco here on pic below, then yes. :)
http://fatalii.net/chile/?u=g&c=search&word=short&id=6367

When do you start to attach them ?
Which tools do you use to attach them together ?
Will they merge ?

Thx an BR

I just tie them together when they are still small.

Some plants will merge, especially many wild ones and most rocotos and some baccatums.

The most cultivated ones usually won't merge.