Curious: What is the smallest pot size you can grow peppers in?

obeychase

obeychase

I'm very curious as to how small you can go with pepper plant container sizes. I know that peppers planted in larger pots will be more productive, but what is the bare minimum?
 
I seriously wonder if you transplanted a seedling, let's say a Bhut Jolokia, into a solo cup and left it there for its entire life, what would happen? Would the plant produce a few nice pepper pods? Would the plant eventually die from being too root bound?
 
I'm curious to hear everyone's opinion.
 
My theory, some people have created bonsai pepper plants that have done beautifully. If you kept pruning the roots back to avoid being rootbound, could a solo cup work as a permanent home??? If so, this would be super helpful in growing a lot of varieties that you wanted to experiment with instead of dedicating the space of a 5 gallon container for a variety. I'm speaking more-so about indoor growing.
 
Bonsai pepper plants aren't in theory. Search this site and others and you will find dozens of examples. Could a solo cup work as a permanent home? IMO, it depends upon the variety and how long you mean when you say "permanent", assuming you aren't going for bonsai. If you just mean one season, yes, sure, go for it. Again, excluding bonsai, consider what I've found - when I overwinter plants, I remove them from their pots, remove as much soil as possible, even washing the roots out, trim the roots, then repot into fresh soil before bringing them inside. Some varieties, annuums in particular, have very small root balls. Others pretty much take up the entire pot, while others are somewhere in between. Jalapenos have surprisingly small root balls, so I keep them in small pots - 1 gallon do the trick, easy enough. It's not hard to envision a jalapeno in a Solo cup, even for more than one season. Doughlahs, on the other hand, have root systems that always push the limits of the pots. I kept a Douglah going for four years and all four years kept going up in pot size. 
 
I pot mine up from the normal tray cells, to solo cups (4 quarter inch holes in he bottom of each cup), then to final 5 gallon buckets, one plant per bucket. However, the problem I had when I left them in the cups too long was the roots actually did so well, they plugged the drain holes in the cups and my plants all started to turn yellow. If you look back through my old posts from a few years ago. You will see what I'm talking about.

I'm amazed when I see people leave plants in 3.5 inch or 4 inch square containers and they seem to do just fine, I don't know how they manage it.
 
Somewhere I saw a guy experiment with a grow from a shot glass. It seemed to work, but I would not recommend it. Well attended you may be able to stick to the solo cup for a season. Bigger is always better, but hell give it a try.
 
Hmm, everyone's input is interesting! I'll have to give it a shot and start a glog on "The Solo Cup Bhut". Stay tuned I guess.
 
I do 5 gal and grow 5'Primo, (supers)
I tried smaller before but the plant yield was terrible. (compared to bigger buckets now)
All over winters go in 7 gal and are amazing producers.
 
Fertilize often and water as needed.  So long as the plant can acquire enough water and nutes....
 
At some point - when you're watering multiple times per day - you'll be closer to a hydroponic grow than soil based.
 
Some dude here on THP posted a picture of a plant that somehow survived in a sour cream container (the small one, 8 oz?). Apparently, a seed found it's way into the container down behind all of his plants in his green house. There was exactly zero dirt but it got watered with all the other plants via his drip system. Anyway, this plant was bearing fruit (Red Bhut's if memory serves) and was 4 feet tall. Kind of a happy accidental hydroponic system. Blew my friggen mind. lol
 
I wish I could find that post he made.
 
Don't forget about the air pruning pots that could be used to naturally keep it from being root bound. Maybe put a few tiny holes large enough to turn the solo cup into an air prune container. Never tried it myself but the theory seems to be that it would work. My uncle used to do this with tomatos in a 2 liter coke bottle years ago.
 
obeychase said:
 

 
What the hell is a CGN24360?
Click to expand...
 
 
It's a wild pepper 
 
20160429_131821.jpg
 
BigB said:
 
 
It's a wild pepper 
 
20160429_131821.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Is it good??
Trident chilli said:
It is possible to go small .... A few seasons ago I took part in a friendly challenge organised by the Italian forum .... grow a chilli in a ping-pong ball



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I am seriously absolutely jaw dropped! You seriously GREW a pod in a ping pong ball??? How was the root system not as solid as a rock??
 
As far as I can remember I sourced the colourful ping pong balls from e-bay ... the rules where a hole no more than 10cm and a single small drainage hole



This was my Golen Hab



I am sorry I can't remember this variety



Although as you can see from the previous photographs this variety did produce whilst the Hab didn't ... choice of variety is important and I think the winner was a little Tepin as the final chilli was judged on its overall appearance. Tall varieties suffer as you can see at the base of plant and have to be supported

I pushed rock wool into the ball and placed a seed within ... Using a syringe to water I placed the ball on some NFT spreader mat ... then nature took its course
 
obeychase said:
 
IT IS POSSIBLE!

 
What the hell is a CGN24360?
Click to expand...
 
CGN is an acronym for Centre for Genetic Resources, the Netherlands...http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Statutory-research-tasks/Centre-for-Genetic-Resources-the-Netherlands-1.htm
 
Capsicum search here.... http://cgngenis.wur.nl/ZoekGewas.aspx?ID=2rahgrad&Cropnumber=38
 
CGN24360 specifics here... http://cgngenis.wur.nl/AccessionDetails.aspx?ID=2rahgrad&acnumber=CGN24360
 
Hope this helps!
 
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