This morning dad tripped while escorting our dog on her rounds and the two hatch peppers broke his fall. I’m glad he landed on the peppers honestly, because if he hadn’t it could have been much worse.
Our dog is one of those dogs who continuously gets underfoot. In a small or medium dog the greatest risk is to the animal- in our 80 pound behemoth the only one getting hurt is us. I once tripped over her going down the front stairs and ended up scraped and stunned flat on my back on the sidewalk. She’s an adorable menace. Dad is fine- scrapes and bruises only-
But sadly one of the peppers was killed outright- snapped stem. Better it than dad.
The larger more productive pepper with all its beautiful baby peppers got bent out of the pot and was looking very precarious, but I’m not going to give up yet!
Hence operation emergency transplant!
You can see the stupid plastic planter in the back which frankly was too short for 2 pepper plants anyways. I buried the stem as much as I could (the root ball was massive) and I had to tie it to a stake as the stem definitely got damaged, poor thing is listing to one side. I’m going to give it some early seaweed fertilizer tonight as a last ditch attempt to save it.
I really don’t know if this will work. 5 or so hours has passed since the transplant and it seems… alive? But I know from experience that the real test will be in a day or so how it looks.
Plants, especially peppers which are kinda weedy, can be resilient- I had a sorrel plant which kept getting torn up in winter that would mysteriously re-appear every spring despite our best efforts to kill it.
Fingers crossed. It looks nicer in this pot anyways.
This morning, sitting on the concrete path looking at how the stem was bending. I was thinking about what size stake to put in the pot and my hands were filthy with old and new dirt, and while I was trying to see what I could do, the whole garden was thrumming with life. Under where the plastic planter was pill bugs and centipedes crawled into new dark crevices. I wrestled the pepper pot into it’s new home and black beetles moved out of the way. The birds in the apple tree were chirping, happy to watch me work. Bees congregated around the basil bush.
Dad is ok. The dog is ok. The garden will be ok. Worst case- I’m down to 4 pepper plants. Best case I still have 5.
Everything will be ok.
The Neanderthal Gardens 