I have seen videos and pictures of pepper plants getting up to 7 feet tall... How do I keep my plants from becoming that big? Will topping/pruning keep them small?
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Is there any way to keep pepper plants relatively small?
- Thread starter backyardpepper
- Start date
yep , they will bush out , i top a lot of mine. 
Either top em or bottom em. Trim the top growth or trim the roots (or confine the area that the roots are able to grow in). I tend to stay away from root trimming unless I am about to overwinter them. To much root trimming with to much top growth can lead to leaf drop, blossom drop or no flowers, fruit drop or no fruit. Cutting back top growth is the easiest and safest way to go. And as a bonus, you can always use your cuttings for clones 
Cheerz
CheerzHow small will they be? I'm guessing that will depend on how much I top them?
Oh and how far apart should I put the plants when I put them into the ground?
Oh and how far apart should I put the plants when I put them into the ground?
depends on how much room you have , and how many plants you got my friend !
Put them in small pots - thats the easiest way. I had a bunch of ornamentals growing in 800ml pots last year, and they all produced a few pods, were fully functional plants so to speak - just really small.
How small of a plant do you want? You can probably go Bonsai small if you wanted to although I have little if any knowledge on that. #2 the normal thinking is space them so they don't shade the plant next to it out or rob the nutrients from surrounding plants. They are pretty much general questions though. What varieties are you growing, what zone do you live in, what is your soil profile like, what is the normal height of the varieties that you are growing, ect. ect.
That won't happen anyway. You need to be doing something seriously right for seven feet. All of mine are 2-4 feet, and that's trying to get them to grow. If their soil is dry, they will look for water by growing roots, and then they get big. Just keep them decently well watered and you'll be fine.backyardpepper said:
cruzzfish said:
I disagree. They use up their nutes quickly in small pots and start starving. Given the right nute program they should stay healthy. I have some supers that have been in one gallon pots for 5 months. They are about 16" tall, healthy and producing pods. Not a lot of pods and most are small but healthy and producing none the less.
People make Bonchi chile plants, so you can keep them extremely small, if you have the time and patience for it. But as cruzzfish already said, most chile plants don't get 7 ft. tall and, at that, only if you have the right conditions for it and keep them growing for multiple years. What varieties are you growing? And how small is "relatively small" for you? I guarantee you that you aren't going to get a jalepeño plant much more than 2-3 ft. tall any time soon, as an example.
cruzzfish said:
No clue. I haven't tried. I don't see why they would get "sick" per se, but they will be stunted and produce less, no? I'm sure there would be some negative side effect to restricting them from reaching their full potential. I just don't really have experience on what that is.
Here you go - a numex twilight, I actually measured this pot - it's only 500ml (0.13 us gallons), I had about 8 of these pots with bolivian rainbows and another 8 with numex twilights for my sister's wedding to have on tables etc, and they all ended up looking very tidy.None of them got sick, I gave them no extra nutes in addition to what was already in the potting mix.
And here's a bolivian rainbow:
And here's a bolivian rainbow: