Out of my 6 pepper plants, 1 appears to be a bit stunted and shorter - it
is the banana pepper plant. When I look at the plant up close, I see that
the base of the plant, where the main stem meets the ground, seems to be
brown and not hard like the rest of the stem - almost as if there is some
sort of "infection". The plant has not died, but it isn't really growing
much, either. I have mounded soil up around the affected area, hoping that
it may grow additional roots through the soil. Should I apply some sort of
fungicide or other chemical? Should I tear out the plant to make sure this
doesn't spread somehow to the neighboring plants? Leaves and fruit on the
affected plant seem slightly yellower and smaller than the rest of the
plants.

Even with this shortcoming, after applying the tomato fruit set spray
roughly 10 days ago, I now have 57 peppers on my 6 plants - fully double
what I had 10 days ago, when I complained about low fruit set. One of my
jalapeno peppers has a couple of places now where there are 3 peppers
together in a "bunch"!

I would heartily recommend the tomato fruit set spray to anyone who has
healthy pepper plants that otherwise don't seem to be bearing as heavily as
they ought to be. Spraying it once and waiting less than two weeks for the
plants to respond seems to be all that is required.