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Pot Size.. Does size matter?

I have 3 plants bunched together in 1 gallon flower pots, and most have pods after a year.
Severly pruned early on, and watering is critical to keeping them alive, but am fitting 18 or 19 alive and producing on a small desk in front of a window.
 
Well.. ehh. Not necessarily BUT it will help a lot.
 
Large pots have much better water regulation, i.e. if your plant uses 1 liter of water (or gallon, oz whatever) per day.. you need to supply that to the plant.
 
If you have a small pot and water that much, you will oversoak your roots.. It will use it up during the day, but it's not as efficient. If you water the same amount in a large pot the capillair effect of the soil will distribute the moisture over the whole substrate more evenly. Why is that a plus? More oxygen in the roots helps a lot with nutriënt uptake and is less pathogen prone then waterlodged soil.
 
However, 3 gallons is a nice pot size to start with. The minimum is about 1 gallon, but it takes a lot of discipline not to overwater that and to supply the proper amount of nutes. With a large pot you have a lot more organic material available, so even if your mineral nutes run out (from your ferts) it will have more nutes available from the soil.
 
So yes.. big pots are much easier for huge yields, however if you have the discipline you can use smaller pots and they will do just fine.
 
It's a trial year for me too. Hard to let go of "optimal" and what everyone "knows" is best and just try new things that might darn well fail. So I think it's worth trying just to grow as a gardener.
 
And why not try both? You could do a few 5 gallon buckets (I think those hold more like 7 gallons of medium, by the way), a few 3 gallon pots, a few 6" pots, some SIPs, some fabric grow bags, some plastic grow bags, some reusable totes. Maybe trial some different soil mediums too. Baby the plants you're most excited about and let the others fight it out in Pepper Thunderdome.
 
Or just pick one so it'll look all neat in rows. Whatever makes you happy.
 
Just use your pots that you have and put them in an ascending order of size so that the big plants don't overshadow the small ones. Unless you live in an area that gets a lot of sun anyway.
 
I grew some nice pairs of plants that were sharing a ~6 gallon Wallybag.
 
(In retrospect, one bigger plant is probably the better option - more growth, more nodes and pods, less competition and tangling.)
 
Just be ready to feed them when the soil starts to bonk out.  FWIW, I had good luck with continuous, low-dose 'fertigation' using magic blue crystals and other water soluble fertilizers.
 
Depends a lot on what size of plant you like. Bigger pots=bigger plants.
 
A couple of good illustrations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FWOjX89psI
 
 
Last year I had a plant in a 2 liter pot (0.5 gallon) inside in a windowsill, it remained relatively small, and produced about 25 or so peppers during the season.
Outside I had plants in 5 liter pots which produced better, and had bigger, more sturdy plants.
Also had a plant in 20 liter pot, which produced a whole lot more of peppers.
 
Also worth to note, as others have stated, I experienced that the larger the container, the less often I had to water the plants.
 
So if you grow for yield, outside with plenty space, go >15 liter pots (4-5 gallon), for low effort, high yield growing.
 
For more variety or houseplants, smaller pots will do fine, though your effort per yielded pepper increases drastically.
 
This is where I got my cloth bags.
 
https://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/root-pouch-grey-fabric-pot-3-4-year/grow-bags
 
$1.50 each for 5 gal.
 
Those worked real well for me last year, I used 30 of them.
 
(And I'm re-using them again this year.)
 
 
As far as "does pot size matter" yes.
 
The plant will only grow to be as big as the roots allow it to grow.
 
The bigger the pot, the bigger the plant.
 
(Although, you can make up a little for a smaller pot with careful fertilizing and good soil, just as you can destroy and /or dwarf a plant in a pot with bad fertilizing and bad soil)
 
Pot size matters the longer your growing season is. If you start late or you have a short growing season, you can probably get away with a smaller pot. However, most years my peppers in 5 gallon pots sort of max out while the ones in the ground keep growing... and growing... and growing... until the frost comes.

Part of that is just due to the aforementioned issues, watering in particular, it's much more difficult to keep a pepper in a pot optimally saturated in the hotter months. Plus more frequent watering means you're washing out soil nutrients so you'll probably have to adjust your fertilizer regimen as well.

Unless you enjoy micromanaging, bigger is better when it comes to growing space.
 
Pot size matters. Here's my yellow moruga in a 7 gallon pot.
 
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D3monic said:
5gal pot is cheaper than a 5 gallon bucket. Unless buckets are free. Another people use is fabric grocery bags 
 
Click to expand...
 
Edit:
 
Nevermind!  Didn't realize I already replied to this old thread.  DERP!
 
Depending how the end of the season goes, I have either 2 months or 3 months left of grow season.These two plants are blowing up exponentially. They will also make the cut for all year grow. 20 gal brute trash cans are the ticket. I grew the same plants in 3 gal containers last year and had to water daily. The container size had huge implications on total crop output. the larger plant a standard brown moruga originally from Judy at Pepper lovers has easily 100 buds on it and is growing like a virus.
 
20150718_202619.jpg

 
20150718_202517.jpg
 
It's not (only) the pot-size, that matters, it's more the way, the roots can spread in the container, which was chosen.
 
plants usually can only get nutrition at the first few centimeters of the root. but roots continue growing. that's why bigger pots provide a better upkeep of watering (next to the storage capability) and nutrition. once, roots reach the end of the container (plastic wall), they start to do, what they do in nature, when hitting an obstacle - they try to grow around of it. since the container has no end, the root could grow around, it just grows in circles. when using small containers < 2 gals i.e., and having plants that usually grow very big, the roots will circle and circle around the inside of the pot. on some point, the roots will have grown completely between the container-wall and the previosly grown circle. then it's even harder for the roots to supply the plant, cause there's a homegrown barrier...
Solution to that is either the use of bigger pots, or the use of air-pots/planting pouches. the effects of the second is, when the roots reach the "wall", they are open to air and daylight, which makes them die. this is a signal to the plant to start new roots. this however solves the problem of ring-roots and gives the plant the opportunity to gather nutritions and water from the center of the pot, and not only from the end. considering solution one - the bigger pots - there's a rule-of-thumb: roots grow as big as the bush. so if you've got a pube, that's got a 1 meter diameter - the roots would also be as long. if container-radius + circumference is more than the plants diameter, pretty everything is fine - if not, then bigger pot. :)
 
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