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Any pot growers?

Everything looks unorganized in this video, but you will be able to see the difference in growing plants in the ground, in smaller pots, and it 5 gallon buckets. I did that last year as an experiment to see what ya'll are talking about now.
IMO, 5 gallon buckets are the way to go!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0J8WVLh2Yk[/youtube]
 
I'll be growing about 60-70 chile peppers, 5-10 tomatoes, and about 5-6 tomatillos in pots this year. The chile peppers will go mostly in 6 gallon pots, if I get some really good growers they'll be potted up to 10 gallons. The tomatoes will go in 6 or 10 gallon containers depending on the variety, and the tomatillos will go in 10 gallons since they grow like weeds on steroids.

I'll also be putting about 40 chiles, 8-10 tomatoes, and 5-6 tomatillos at a friends house in the ground.
 
I grow about 40 peppers per year, roughly half in pots and half in the ground. Personally, I enjoy growing them in pots more - I find it easier to control things. For instance, a massive thunderstorm can be thwarted by opening a big umbrella and nudging all the pots under it. A bug infestation on one plant can quickly be quaranteened from the others. And so on. Also, it's easier to control the soil mix - just open a bag of ProMix and fill to the top; there's no "nature" to contend with.

I use 12" and 14" pots, depending on the plant. Jalapenos in 12", aji's in 14", etc. I've tried 8 and 10" pots, and a 16" pot too. I think the best results come from 14" pots, but 12" is a more efficient use of space and less expensive soil-wise. 10" is too small, at least for me. What's gained in space-saving is lost in pod count and size. My impression is that 12" is a nice compromise and balance of all the variables. I do think deeper is better (or so my wife says LOL). Some garden pots are 12" wide but only 10" deep. I much prefer a true foot of depth in the pot for peppers. It seems to really impact the plant's production.

AFAIK a "5 gallon" garden pot is not really 5 gallons, and equates to the traditional 12" wide, 10" tall pot, which is really more like 3 3/4 or 4 gallons. A true 12"x12" is closer to 5 gallons but still not quite there. A 5 gallon paint bucket is larger in volume than a 5 gallon garden pot - taller.
 
Man, I wouldn't mind growing... Wait, what are we talking about? Oooohh, containers, right... ;)

I think that, given ideal conditions, planting in the ground is better. If only those ideal conditions were attainable! But in containers, it's much easier to control those conditions to get to the ideal. If your plants are getting too much or not enough sun, you can easily move them. And the best spot for a plant often changes from early in the season to later in the season.

I'll be doing both this year. I've had luck with five gallon buckets in the past, picked up from a restaurant (they had soap in them, but I washed them out good and they worked just fine). I may even spring for a couple of these this year. I try not to spend money on my supplies, but I think it's worth it, to experiment with size/substrate. But I'm a nerd like that. :think:
 
DSCF0099.jpg

I think Chilli Monsta needs to fess up.... The real reason the plants are thriving is the hat and moustache wearing chilli pinata-thing that is gaining favour with the Chilli Gods.
 
AFAIK a "5 gallon" garden pot is not really 5 gallons, and equates to the traditional 12" wide, 10" tall pot, which is really more like 3 3/4 or 4 gallons. A true 12"x12" is closer to 5 gallons but still not quite there. A 5 gallon paint bucket is larger in volume than a 5 gallon garden pot - taller.

I think that's correct. The pots I use are listed as 7 gallon, but their actual volume is 6.15 gallons iirc.
 
I grew about 25% of my plants in 5 gal. buckets last year. It was my first year doing so, and I was pleasantly surprised at the plant health, size and production. All were comparable or better than what I grew in raised beds. Of course the raised beds contained heavy Kansas clay soil and the buckets were all full of MG potting mix. I have been working on the raised bed soil, but it is not primo chile-growing soil yet.

I think I drilled 4 quarter inch holes in the bottom of the buckets and threw gravel in first, followed by a few inches of potting mix, then a shaking of Osmocote, then filling up to the top with potting mix. I don't really think the gravel is necessary and I will skip that step this season. As long as you don't overwater, they seem to have more than adequate drainage, but don't dry out too quickly.

I put tomato cages in each pot, but figured out they were not necessary because the plant stalks were thick enough, and the roots developed enough to support the plants, even fully loaded with pods. Not so much on my raise bed plants, most of which required staking or caging. If I could, I would grow all my plants in pots, but I don't have a ready source of buckets (yet) and the potting mix does get kind of expensive, at least for the first year or so (I will recycle my potting mix this season and see if I get similar results). I do use a no-fuss drip irrigation system with 1/2 gph emitters and water every third day when temps are mild, every other day when the sun and temps are screaming. I have to say that the roots on my potted plants looked a hell of a lot healthier than those grown in the raised beds. I overwintered about 45 plants this year, and all the potted ones did great after a serious root trim. Most of the ones dug up from the raised beds died over the winter. So I only have one season's experience with potted chiles, but can say it has been a good experience so far.
 
[Megamoo quote ]
I think Chilli Monsta needs to fess up.... The real reason the plants are thriving is the hat and moustache wearing chilli pinata-thing that is gaining favour with the Chilli Gods.
[/quote]

Well Megamoo, it looks like you figured out my secret for a healthy pepper garden.
I used to run naked around the yard under a full moon, but soon realized the Chili gods became nauseated....(and believe me, no one else wants to see a pic of that ritual)
 
I grew about 25% of my plants in 5 gal. buckets last year. It was my first year doing so, and I was pleasantly surprised at the plant health, size and production. All were comparable or better than what I grew in raised beds. Of course the raised beds contained heavy Kansas clay soil and the buckets were all full of MG potting mix. I have been working on the raised bed soil, but it is not primo chile-growing soil yet.

I think I drilled 4 quarter inch holes in the bottom of the buckets and threw gravel in first, followed by a few inches of potting mix, then a shaking of Osmocote, then filling up to the top with potting mix. I don't really think the gravel is necessary and I will skip that step this season. As long as you don't overwater, they seem to have more than adequate drainage, but don't dry out too quickly.

I put tomato cages in each pot, but figured out they were not necessary because the plant stalks were thick enough, and the roots developed enough to support the plants, even fully loaded with pods. Not so much on my raise bed plants, most of which required staking or caging. If I could, I would grow all my plants in pots, but I don't have a ready source of buckets (yet) and the potting mix does get kind of expensive, at least for the first year or so (I will recycle my potting mix this season and see if I get similar results). I do use a no-fuss drip irrigation system with 1/2 gph emitters and water every third day when temps are mild, every other day when the sun and temps are screaming. I have to say that the roots on my potted plants looked a hell of a lot healthier than those grown in the raised beds. I overwintered about 45 plants this year, and all the potted ones did great after a serious root trim. Most of the ones dug up from the raised beds died over the winter. So I only have one season's experience with potted chiles, but can say it has been a good experience so far.
midwestchilihead,
Sounds like we had a very similar experience with plant health and yield in the buckets.
As a result,this season...my raised beds will remain covered, and instead,will be converted to potted pepper patch.

The potting soil mix for the buckets is a little pricey, but I still want my peppers to have new soil.
So,I'm recycling last years soil for a few more 2011 container experiment's: such as growing potato's, onions, lettuce,kale and mustard greens.
I also realized that putting cages in every pot was probably not necessary. While the cages did actually protect my plants when they were overturned in a wind storm, the poblano and banana pepper plants were the only ones that got tall enough to warrant the added expense of a cage.
BTW: Its amazing how many "free" food grade buckets I've been able to get from local restaurants. All I did was put out a few "feelers" at a couple pizza parlors, O'Charlies,Chick-fil-a, etc, and they started rolling in.
 
Those green Chick-Fil-A pickle buckets are pretty rocking. I got quite a few for free last year myself, and even when I did pay for them they were still cheaper than going to Home Depot or Lowes. I hear Chinese restaurants have a steady supply of buckets as well...soy sauce, I believe?

As far as my experience with growing in pots and in the ground, the ones in the ground have always grown bigger, had more pods, and looked healthier. It is probably user error, most likely under fertilizing. I had a pretty good mix last year, but I think I put too much perlite in it, and the rains kept washing out all the nutrients. I got lazy and didn't feed either my potted or in ground peppers very much. I basically did no maintenance whatsoever for the last 3 months of the growing season, and the peppers in the ground were thriving, while the ones in the buckets slowed to a crawl.

Bottom line for me, if you have the space and you don't like to constantly fuss over your plants, in the ground is the way to go. I think I am just too lazy to keep trying to control the ideal set of variables to make potted peppers thrive. I prefer to chuck them in the ground with some good compost and worm castings, maybe feed them some fish guts and epsom salt a few times throughout the season, and just let them do their thing.
 
POTAWIE: I have sort of noticed what you explained, how a plant has to be growing well to actually *want* the extra space. Some plants seemed to be happy to grow extra to take the extra space, while others were more hesitant. I guess maybe in my case there were just a few weaklings? Those same ones were kind of small in the first place, and I was wondering if they were stunted. If it wasn't so much extra trouble having to judge whether it needs something bigger or not and having to repeatedly pot-up and use more potting soil, it would definitely be something I would consider. I think for now though I'll just go the easy route and use one pot size for all (except the second-year overwintered ones)... it seemed to work adequately last year, IMO, it just later became obvious that the pots were too small. I might try gradual potting up on a few plants next year (or this year, if I get a few at local greenhouses) to see what happens.

megamoo: Nah, I did all the comparing between garden and pots last year, and pots it is. The garden was less maintenance (watering), while the pots were more healthy and easier to work with (though they required far more work and attention). The garden will be used for other things that make more sense to me, like pumpkins, watermelon, sunflowers and tomatoes. Bigger, more sprawling plants basically that need the extra room and sturdiness of the ground. The purpose of this thread is more to get ideas on how other container gardeners have got the best results, to get ideas on what would work well or not in terms of pot size, anchoring them down in the wind, fertilizing and maybe soil mixes.

Chili Monsta: Wow... those things are *huge*. Very nice looking plants. Looks like your cat likes them too. :)

mega: What's weird is that, although I didn't try growing any peppers in 12" or 14" pots yet, based on my experienced with the 9-10" pots, I was predicting those sizes to be about perfect for what I needed. I will probably still go for 12" though because, as you said, it would be a bit more compact and cheaper to fill with soil. On the other hand, a 14" pot might be less top-heavy by summer and slightly less likely to fall over. Unfortunately, I think it's best to side with cheapness instead of functionality here; I can't imagine it being that big of a difference. But one question though... what size seems to work best for C. chinense species? Just curious, as that is primarily what I will be growing. Currently, I only have plans to grow two jalapeno plants.

Thanks to everyone for the tips. Now, I just need to think about how I'm going to set my porch up, and hope that the plants grow big and tons of peppers, but not so big as to take up too much room later in the season. I'm thinking of getting a few cinderblocks and some long boards of wood (hopefully wide enough for two rows of plants throughout the season, but I'll see...) to act as tables and put plants all along the sides of the east section of the porch. I'm still considering whether I should use some sort of plastic as a windbreak and prevent rain storms from spreading disease, or if doing so would rob the plants of too much morning rays of sunlight (which is primarily what they will be receiving), or use rocks or sand to weigh the pots down. Man, so many things to consider.

With 30 plants (yes, it is a decent sized porch), I'm kind of wondering how it will turn out, but it does look like quite a few will fit if the other stuff is cleaned off the porch. If some plants cannot fit, I have a garden that I could use for backup, which will likely otherwise be used for pumpkins. If I had a picnic table or something, I could put it over (or beside) the garden and just put the pots on there, but I don't have one.
 
Thanks U-Zelda for taking the time to post your thoughts/experience.
Personally, I've become a pot/bucket farmer exclusively, because I've had good results with the approach...as have many others.I keep pretty good personal records of my findings, and always interested in what other growers are doing and learning.
I am look forward to seeing your upcoming posts/results.
BTW...what region of Ohio....?
CM
 
Thanks U-Zelda for taking the time to post your thoughts/experience.
Personally, I've become a pot/bucket farmer exclusively, because I've had good results with the approach...as have many others.I keep pretty good personal records of my findings, and always interested in what other growers are doing and learning.
I am look forward to seeing your upcoming posts/results.
BTW...what region of Ohio....?
CM
I'm in a crappy little town pretty much on the east border of Stark County. It's pretty far up in the northeast region of the state, but closer to Pennsylvania than Cleveland/Lake Erie. Kind of nervous this year because I've made the decision to try making my own potting soil mix (the pre-made stuff just costs too much to fill up ~30 pots).
 
I just potted up my annums from beer cups to #1 pots today with my first try at homemade mix, so keeping my fingers crossed. Got lots of info from folks here and the soil thread by LGHT.
 
mega ......But one question though... what size seems to work best for C. chinense species? Just curious, as that is primarily what I will be growing. Currently, I only have plans to grow two jalapeno plants.

I think the 12" pots have been working great for my C. chinenses. The 14"s I only used for ajis, tomatoes, serranos, and the occasional large-pod sweet pepper. Here is a pic of a bunch of my peppers from last year in 12" pots; about half were chinenses, including the red hab in the lower left with the spoke-style support:

019-1.jpg


Here's a pic of a nicely robust hab plant thriving in a 12" pot - it's clearly "outgrown" the pot horizontally-speaking, but the pod production was very high, about 110 by the end of the season, better than my in-ground habs:

030-4.jpg


as noted earlier, though, different 12" pots have different depths, and I do think the ones with a true 12" depth yield a lot more pods than the (more common) ones that have a 10"-11" depth. The pots in the first photo have a full 12" depth.
 
Yeah, I can actually see the difference in the height of those pots just by looking. They look less sloped, too. Those are some pretty big plants, by the way. My guess is that the pots I'll be able to find around here will not be a full foot high, probably somewhere around 10.5". To be honest, that means less dirt needed, so in a way I'm not disappointed... heh.

Actually though, all of the plants I've grown in pots... I never filled their pots 100% with soil either. I usually left over an inch unoccupied, mostly because I would end up running out of soil quicker if I didn't. Now that I think of it, I wonder even more now how the hell I kept those things going later in the year. But somehow, they were all going (clearly in desperate need of potting up because they dried out almost daily) into fall.

Looking back... yeah, I think my containers were about as inadequate is they could be. Both in size and actual soil height.

One thing I'm looking into this year is putting the plants down lower, so most of the pots themselves are shaded by the porch ledge, yet the plants are not shaded at all. Last year, being put on the ledge or on a table beside the ledge that was even taller, the whole plant--including its pot--got all the heat from the sun, which I still think was at least part of the drying problem.
 
Yes, we grow in pots and in the ground here every year. Most years get just as good production as the inground plants and a few years they did much better (esp. rainy years).

We use the standard issue black nursery pot #5 (I think, 12 inches across). But our first year we even "harvested" 5 gallon buckets from dumpsters and drilled holes in the bottom. Worked great!

We also try to plan which plants we definitely want atleast one of inside for the winter, and make sure to keep one in a pot during the summer. Then we don't have to disturb its roots when it comes in for the winter. We can always dig one up, but its nice to have a guarantee on the side.

Kendra
 
The 5 gal buckets have a low WAF for me. I have a bunch of big decorative pots I have used . I put 4 fatallis in one last year, but that pot was 24" wide and 20" deep and they thrived. Just an idea, I work construction and see a lot of buckets tossed into jobsite dumpsters from drywall finishers and painters. You can always check in those for some.A good cleaning should be all they would need.
 
I saw this thread and wanted to revive it. I've long been a chilehead but only started growing them Summer of 2010. On a whim, really. I saw a Habanero plant for sale and got it and also a couple Jalapenos. Just transplanted them into containers and that was that. Well, they surpassed my wildest dreams with yeilds! I got tons of Jalapenos and Habaneros! I couldn't believe how many I got! And the funny thing was, the Habanero produced another small flush after bringing it in the house when the temperatures dropped here in Autumn. Made an awesome houseplant while it lasted.

See, we live in Flagstaff at the base of Mount Elden. We discovered that we hit solid limestone at about a foot here. The soil is poor also. But last Summer, I discovered that we have the perfect spot for growing chiles (which is nice because if we try growing anything else, the squirrels eat them---they quickly learned to leave my peppers alone last year, heh heh...) So containers are the only way to go for us. This year, with many thanks to Redtail Forester and Pepperfever, we will be growing a whole lot of great peppers like Naga Jolokia, Trinidad Scorpion, Scotch Bonnets, White Bullet Habanero, and many others. This place has also been known to produce a snowstorm in late May, so it's nice to have the option to bring them indoors if that happens. Back in 2007 I think it was, we had snow on Memorial Day.
 
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