unlikely to be fertilizer burn as long as you followed the directions on the package. I would guess something more of environment varilable, temp,sunlight, water, etc.. anything else change with environmental conditions? how often are you watering and what kind of weather have you been getting?

Have you changed the soil out? I would either change it out or at least repot to a larger container to add new soil around the existing rootball. The woody stem is normal not drying out.

Yeah, if you're just talking about the woody stem, that's just what some peppers grow. There does look to be some damage to the stem, but I don't think it will be a problem. Looks like it could use some water.

I would just put that in a larger container with some good container soil. Lay off the fertilizers if you do. The soils usually come with it already built in. Remove most of the soil from the root ball when you transplant it and I would suggest a container of at least 3 gallons.

What variety of pepper is that anyway?

Why are you suggesting he removes most of the soil from the root ball? I think that is unnecessary and would only cause further damage. The plant doesn't even appear to be in that bad of shape. I would just repot it, without doing any further damage to the plant or the root ball.

You can do that if you wish. But, you felt something was wrong enough to post it here.

My thoughts are that you might have over fertilized it or there is another problem in the soil. Transplanting it as is, will just transplant the problem along with it. You asked "if the plant was even salvageable at this point". It gives me the impression that it was in pretty bad shape.

I merely offered my suggestion as to what I would do in your position.

One other thing you might want to do is to harvest the red (ripe) peppers. Give the plant the opportunity to concentrate it's effort on the rest of the plant.

Good luck and let us know what you decide.

Esox, I wasn't the original poster. I know he said he may have over fertilized it, but it doesn't really look like that to me. I'd suggest flushing it with water if that was really the case. I think that would do less damage in the long run.

Yes, you could be right. I don't think dropping some of the old soil would really hurt the plant though. It might put it in a bit of a dormant stage for a while, but it doesn't look like that would be a problem since the plant is already putting out ripe pods. The disruption of the root ball would also encourage the root bound roots to start moving outward again instead of in the confined shape they are likely in right now. Either way it should be beneficial in the long run for the plant.