I was walking the dogs today and got to thinking about pepper heat and the things I had read about which conditions lend themselves to hotter pods. This lead me to wonder if there was an appreciable difference in the heat of pods grown in containers versus the ground. My thinking was that since potted plants tend to get the entire plant to a warmer temperature which in turn could lead to more stress on the plant, this possibly leads to a reduced plant size but also possibly makes the pods hotter. The pots, which tend to be black absorb more heat which is directly translated to the root system due to proximity and thereby affects growing conditions set for the plant.
The ground which allows for larger plants due to the lessened temperature fluctuations in root systems would logically tend to grow larger plants and normalized heat producing pods. By that I mean average temperature pods for that species.
I understand that the amount of water also affects the amount of heat "felt" when consuming pods due to the plants being more stressed out with less water. This again is much more easily accomplished with containers due to our intervention with the amount of water administered.
So am I WAY OVERTHINKING this or does it makes sense to anyone?
