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My first pepper plants

All my plants that went in 1 gallon containers grew better than plants put directly in 5 gallon pots. These one gallon plants were generally smaller when initially planted, but quickly outpaced the others in 5 gallons. Their growth was mostly vertical though, while the ones in bigger pots are tending to be bushier and more compact. It's very interesting though and all are in 5 gallon now and doing well. I may go from cups to 1 gallon for all my plants in the future, but I want to see what the final results are late in the season, especially pod production.
 
This is a great thread and answered a bunch of my noobie questions. Does the color of the container matter at all? Sounds like I need to stick to 1 gal containers.
 
Myself, I tend to go from the seedling stage to cups or 3-4" pots. Then, when they outgrow those, they go into the big pots. Since I grow stuff indoors in a 1BR apt., I'm only using 8x8" containers...a little less than 2gal.

If I used 3 or 5 gallon containers, I'd need a room just for them that I don't have... :lol:
 
i have room to plant in the ground, but living only 20 miles from the coast is my reasoning behind the pots. I had quite a bit of damage from Hurricane Ike last year and don't want to lose plants because I chose to put them in the ground.
 
4re308 said:
This is a great thread and answered a bunch of my noobie questions. Does the color of the container matter at all? Sounds like I need to stick to 1 gal containers.
Click to expand...

If you live where the summers get hot, those black plastic nusery pots can get very hot if left in full sun through the heat of the day and raise the root zone temps well above nominal levels. This will stress the plant and usually results in wilting and fruit drop.

Black is fine early in the season because it can help warm the soil when temps are cool, but I've seen where some use white or reflective skirts around the black pots when the high summer temps arrive to counter the heat problem. I just limit their exposure during the hottest part of the day and if yours are sheltered from the sun during the hot hours; I wouldn't worry about it.

I wouldn't "stick to 1 gal containers". The idea was to gradually step up repotting container size and not make the leap to the larger pot. I don't think 1 gal is large enough for most peppers.

That's just MHO.
 
I have 4 pots that are a dark color and the rest are light colored, so i have no worries there. And all of my plants are out of the sun by the hottest part of the day.
 
Yep...You are off to a real good start. They all look good. Just remember, try not to stress over them too much and have fun.
 
rds...potting up gradually seems to work better than straight from small container to large container...there is some discussion about that on the Fatalii Smackdown thread...

last year I started Naga Morich in seed starting trays, transplanted to 9 ounce plastic cups, then to 6" pots, then to 5 gallon containers...they grew to over 6 feet tall by the end of the season in December and produced tons of pods...I normally transplant from seed starting tray to 3" container to 5 gallon container...I just have too many plants to go thru another transplant for all of them...for special plants, in the future I will transplant like this...seed starting tray to 3" container to 6" container to 1 gallon container to 5 gallon container then to 7 or 10 gallon container depending on how large the plants get...
 
Well I'm lucky enough that I can get all the 5 gal food grade buckets I want for free, so it will leave me money to buy smaller pots to gradually work my way up to the larger pots. It is just interesting that it works that way with the growth making smaller up sizes on pots than one large jump.
 
I also save all my cottage cheese, yoghurt, sour cream, etc. containers for use as pots. Just cut some holes in 'em and away they go....free pots!

Just today, I potted up the Sweet Banana plant I'd bought at wally world yesterday to a 32oz cottage cheese container. And the baby Hab's also been freed from it's tiny peat prison to a 4" pot.

BEFORE
S6303067.JPG


AFTER
S6303069.JPG
 
Here is an update on a few of my plants. Some are not doing the best due to heat and such, but are doing better now since I fertilized them.

First up is my tabasco plants, that are setting pods like there is no tomorrow for some reason.





And this one had yet to produce flowers or pods for some reason.

 
And up next is my Bhut Jolokia plants.





The last one is one that was potted up to a 6 in pot instead of a 5 gal bucket. The one in the 5 gal has alot of new growth but is still only half the size of the one in the smaller container.

 
These are my red savina habaneros. Noticed the same issues with the 5 gal bucket as opposed to the 6 in pot with these also.





 
And these are my yellow scotch bonnets.





Here are a few of the texas chiltepins. I cant compare the one in the 5 gal bucket to the one in the 6 in pot because I caught the neighbors cat sleeping on my plant in the 5 gal bucket. But the plant is now making a come back.



 
These are my very poor looking mammoth jalapenos. Any ideas on what would help them would be much appreciated.






2 of the plants look decent and alot of new growth, but the one in the first pic is being a pain.
 
These are my habs that I stripped all of the peppers off of since we are having temps close to 100 for the rest of the week. Trying to stress them the least bit possible.






And this is pics of some others I have going from seed. From left to right. 2 rows of some store bought habs that were more peach than orange, 2 rows of cayennes, one of trini perfume, one of choc hab, one of 7 pod jonah, one of scotch bonnet, one of scotch bonnet, one row of billy biker hybrid, and 2 rows of anaheims. All the ones in the single rows, with the exception of the billy bikers, came from scoville.

 
The last one is one that was potted up to a 6 in pot instead of a 5 gal bucket. The one in the 5 gal has alot of new growth but is still only half the size of the one in the smaller container.
Click to expand...

I noticed a similar difference between ones I potted up to 1 gal (from 4") and the ones I put in the ground. I think it just takes the larger containered ones longer to get to the limits of their roots. After the roots get done stretching out they should take off in a growth spurt. Mine had to get dug up before I could do any long term comparisons.


re: mammoth jalapeno
From that picture it just looks like it may like a bit more fertilizer than the others. I assume you're treating all the plants the same. What does the new growth look like?
 
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