Were those roots trimmed? or original medium it grew in?
Hi Jester,
this plant was started as an experimental tissue clone - I take one leaf from my best plant that does best in Zone 6a and cut it into 1mm x 1mm squares. Then it goes into a special agar jar called a "Unicorn" which is sterilized and treated with NAA and a couple plant-derived hormones. This tricks the cells into entering undifferentiated cell growth and becomes a callous mass, much like the callous soft cells you see when you root a clone by cutting right before it shoots out roots. Once that happens, I treat with auxin and another plant-derived hormone is very low levels (parts per billion). It becomes a little plantlet. Once it has two tiny sets of leaves, I drop it in an Oasis or pH adjusted rockwool cube (1.25"). When it roots into that, I just drop it into the bag/tube filled tightly with soilless media and begin my feeding regimen (I make my own nutrients). Things move very quickly from there. The plant shown in the picture is about 12 weeks old now.
So, it is the original "container" it was planted into. I find that this method of propagation is really good for peppers and I'm still perfecting it. Sometimes the seeds aren't always what they are labeled and since many hot peppers started life as hybrids, you can plant a seed from an outdoor crop and not get the same results. By this method I don't worry about genetic drift or passing along things like bacterial spot, and it's really fast. Took me a while how to figure it out though.
Since the sides of the bag/tube are so porous, the tips of the roots will poke through a little bit, but get air pruned. I can even stack the rows of tubes only an inch apart and they won't grow into each other so I can move them around easily. Also run a capillary fabric underneath them so that everything gets watered very evenly (soilless mix has high capillarity).
From what I've seen, you can grow any size plant in tiny containers as long as you give the roots no excuse to go anywhere else looking for water and nutrients. Several years ago I grew a 6' tall sunflower with a 12" head out of 2.5" of growing media (soilless) just to prove it could be done - it had to be supported in three places so it wouldn't fall over since there was only 100 cubic inches of "dirt".
You can do this method with seeds as well, but I find the plants propagated by tissue culture are a little bit more stout, though the seed-started versions still look insane. I have a couple from experimental seed in tubes I can post if you like that are about 11 weeks from germination right now.
Here's some pics of the roots coming through in a couple tubes. Last one is of some Butch-T's forming (hooray!)
If you look on the floor - everytime I move them, flowers fall off. I don't usually let the flowers stay on/get pollinated indoors since I'm growing these for clone stock, but I REALLY wanted to test my indoor Butch-T's against the outdoor counterparts.