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Ornamental pepper growing

Snarg

Snarg

Hello,

I am looking to start growing some ornamental pepper varieties, like NuMex Twilight and similar, in pots. I do have a few questions:

1) These are going to be for re-sale and I was hoping to grow these in 1 gallon pots. Will this be a sufficient pot size?

2) I am in Zone 6. How early should I get these started to be able to have something to sell by, say, June? They will be started indoors and will be moved to a greenhouse later on.

Thank you for your time and I appreciate any help you may be able to provide.
 
I would say 1 gallon pots are fine for most ornamentals since then tend to be small. How early to start them depends on your setup. My ornamentals were started mid March and reached full size in late June.
 
Dshlogg said:
I would say 1 gallon pots are fine for most ornamentals since then tend to be small. How early to start them depends on your setup. My ornamentals were started mid March and reached full size in late June.
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I agree with this^
Most ornamentals do tend to be small but I would just check the info of the pepper your growing on here:
http://www.chileplants.com/chart.asp

It list just about every pepper and there height, heat, and so on...(this site has been very helpful to me)

Also I would start between Feb-March indoors just in case you have finicky variety and that way you'll have enough time to have your peppers in their full colorful presentation.

If your looking for more ornamentals I have a couple to trade... I have some Medusa and Loco seeds.
 
armac said:
We have a great ornamental grower here....Potawie, look him up
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Thank you, I will see if I can get ahold of him.

Dshlogg said:
I would say 1 gallon pots are fine for most ornamentals since then tend to be small. How early to start them depends on your setup. My ornamentals were started mid March and reached full size in late June.
Click to expand...
Thank you. I have picked the one gallon size for storage and portability sake.

We normally start our hot peppers, indoors, around the 1st of February. Once we have good germination, and they are ready to get transplanted to 4" pots, we move them to the greenhouse. The greenhouse has a propane heater however, since propane is not free, we try to run that as little as possible :)

LexaRae said:
I agree with this^
Most ornamentals do tend to be small but I would just check the info of the pepper your growing on here:
http://www.chileplants.com/chart.asp

It list just about every pepper and there height, heat, and so on...(this site has been very helpful to me)

Also I would start between Feb-March indoors just in case you have finicky variety and that way you'll have enough time to have your peppers in their full colorful presentation.

If your looking for more ornamentals I have a couple to trade... I have some Medusa and Loco seeds.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the link. General consensus seems to be that 1 gallon pots should be OK.

Some of the ones I am looking to grow:

NuMex Twilight
Marbles
Medusa
Pretty Purple
Black Pearl
Calico
Sangria
Cappa Conic

Any hints/tips for those particular ones?

I would love to trade, but this is going to be my first time growing them so I don't really have anything to trade yet :)
 
What type of customer base are you expecting? Usually plants treated as annuals aren't grown in pots as large as 1 gallon, but what size you need depends on how long you grow the plants before they are sold.

So, if your target sell date is June you just have to decide how long and large to grow them which will determine when to start them, as well as your expectations about how much more a larger plant will sell for versus your time and electrical bill to grow before they're in the greenhouse.

For example you could start them indoors in Feb., but by June if they are otherwise healthy plants then a 1 gallon pot will have stunted them some, but this is usually the case with plants grown at nurseries, their small pots do slow them down.

The other issue is how much space you have indoors vs when it's going to stay above roughly 50F at night in the greenhouse. They'll survive a bit colder than that but their growth will slow down.

A more generic answer is that if I were growing pepper plants for sale, I'd use 2 to 3 quart pots and start them in the middle of march if expected to sell on June 1st, unless I didn't expect the customers to repot them, then I'd go with 1 gallon pots and start them a few weeks earlier.
 
Dave2000 said:
What type of customer base are you expecting? Usually plants treated as annuals aren't grown in pots as large as 1 gallon, but what size you need depends on how long you grow the plants before they are sold.

So, if your target sell date is June you just have to decide how long and large to grow them which will determine when to start them, as well as your expectations about how much more a larger plant will sell for versus your time and electrical bill to grow before they're in the greenhouse.

For example you could start them indoors in Feb., but by June if they are otherwise healthy plants then a 1 gallon pot will have stunted them some, but this is usually the case with plants grown at nurseries, their small pots do slow them down.

The other issue is how much space you have indoors vs when it's going to stay above roughly 50F at night in the greenhouse. They'll survive a bit colder than that but their growth will slow down.

A more generic answer is that if I were growing pepper plants for sale, I'd use 2 to 3 quart pots and start them in the middle of march if expected to sell on June 1st, unless I didn't expect the customers to repot them, then I'd go with 1 gallon pots and start them a few weeks earlier.
Click to expand...
Dave, thank you for the reply.

We normally have two types of sales: Direct from the farm and farmers markets. There are a few garden events we also attend however I think they are too early in the year for me to have anything ready by then.

Thank you for the suggestions on pot sizes. I might to a 50/50 split, some in 3 quart pots, some in 1 gallon pots. Would you suggest going right from the starter tray to the pots, or would you go starter tray -> 4" pot -> 3 quart/1 gallon pot?

I have not done any looking yet, but do you know of anyone that sells plugs?

Thank you for your time.
 
^ It depends on how small the starter tray compartments are and how much lighting area you have. With a lot of plants going from trays to 3 qt or more pots would waste a lot of space and light, too much I suspect. In that case I'd go tray - 4" - 3 qt, but personally I start out with 3" because my grow space indoors is what it is, not going to get larger and it's doubling as a temperature controlled incubation (germination) chamber, then straight to their final destination which is usually a 4+ gallon bucket or the ground outside, but I suspect I am doing far lower volume than you have in mind. Going with trays first I could start more than two waves of plants a season.
 
Again, thank you Dave2000 for your responses.

I am probably going to start them in 72 cell starter trays. Since this is going to be the first time I have grown them, I am going to try and restrain myself and keep from going overboard :)

Generally, my veggie starts go from starter trays to 4" pots to the final destination however, I do not plan on selling these as just little green plants. I would like some color on them to make them more appealing. I was curious if there was any harm in going directly from the starter trays to a 3qt or 1 gallon pot. Space is not really to much of an issue. I have a 15'x50' greenhouse that I put my starts in.

Thank for the help so far and I am looking forward to your reply.
 
There is no harm moving them to the biggest pot available, if they could speak they'd tell you that's what they want... given that the pot has good soil. I've read a few times where people suggested there was some gain to repotting into a larger and larger again pot, instead of putting it into the destination pot ... that makes no sense to me and does not seem to help in my experience. What matters most is not keeping them in too small a pot, all else being equal.
 
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