"You know what they say about Big Pots...."

PepperDaddler

PepperDaddler

Hello everyone. Just got done building my shadehouse on the 21st and finished all of my transplanting. (It all took 2 full days to complete everything and transplant!) I have a lot of plants. There will be pics in my Glog and on the shadehouse post from a little while back. It is rainy today so I cant do it now.
 
Anyway, after all that transplanting I realized something. First of all it takes a lot more soil and compost, etc. to put a lot of plants in 3 and 5 gallon pots. I did not get to thin out a few plants because I ran out. Oh, well. I don't mind if I have a few more than 1 or 2 per pot anyway, its not a contest for biggest plants to me, and its only a couple like that.
 
The second thing I noticed was some baby caterpillars on the tomato plants which were in close proximity to the pepper plants. They were promptly squished and BT'd.
 
The third thing I noticed, and is the point of my topic, was that pretty soon it may be time to transplant again into fives which I wont have money for. So I wonder how well will they do just left in 3 gallon containers for the remainder of the season? Last year I never got them into anything bigger than one gallon pots which left them a little stunted, but that also had to do with 10 to 20 plants per pot. ( yeah, I know...).
 
They still produced. 
 
So with bigger pots and less plants I think I will be alright this "Season 2". Anyone else just roll with it in the 3's?
 
All nurseries in town wont give up any pots. It was just my luck that after going to every nursery in town over multiple days and a few phone calls, that the VERY LAST ONE I went to was giving away thousands of pots. (literally thousands)
 
Only problem was anything over 3 gallons was going to cost me. With 70 or so plants that's a little more than I can spend after all the money I have put into the plants and the shadehouse project for the year.
 
Any opinions for me on just letting them be in the not too small threes? (Hee, Hee!)
 
Yeah... soil becomes expensive quickly for the larger sized pots.. not to mention the cost of the big pots themselves sky-rockets.  Considering people claim as a general rule that 5 gallons is the minimum pot-size for optimal growth and production it almost becomes prohibitively expensive to pot up and more than a handfull for plants.  That is why planting in the ground or raised beds will almost always be the best option.  You should build a sweet raised bed!!!! Its not as expensive, because you can include soil amendments in a raised bed that you cannot use in pots (topsoil).  You can add fillers mulch, leaves, yard scraps, compost, worms castings, field-aged manure, and even sticks on the bottom... and they will help with the drainage.  If you know a source of good topsoil (your 3rd cousin's bottom lands next to a creek... or someting like that... is an excellent source for a soil medfia that is viable in a raised bed but could not be used in a pot.  And of course you can buy things like vermiculite, perlite, coconut coir, or soiless medias like promix to fluff it up.  Anything goes.
 
However, if left in the 3 gallon pots your plants will do fine if watered daily.  My monster ButchT plant from last year was in a 3 gallon pot... and produced more peppers than I could pick... I am still eating its frozen pods out of the freezer.
 
How well do plants grow in partial shade 24/7?
 
I am moving the plants from them (shaded) porch probably tomorrow and they will be in the new shade house. Not to sure of the percentage of the cloth I got it used from a nursery, actually the same place I got the pots.

I think it is 30% and is black.
 
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