Re: [CH] Growing Peppers in Buckets

Jim Graham (spooky130u@gmail.com)
Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:20:15 -0500 

Oops...meant to send this to the list....

On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 07:13:57PM -0500, Dan D Niles wrote:
> 
> I tried growing peppers in my garden last year, and they did horrible.
> I'm going to try growing them in buckets this year.

I can offer a few hints (all of my yearly pepper gardens have been in
a mix of 5 gallon buckets and BIG black planters that are probably close
to 5 gallons, except more wide than tall).

> I found a few sites with info, but nobody said anything about putting
> holes in the bottom of the buckets.  Do you need holes to let the water
> drain out?

Unless you want root rot, absolutely.  For best/easiest results, use a
drill to drill holes in the bottom, or just buy the big black planters I
referred to (they're roughly 12" tall, and have a diameter of somewhere
around 16" ... but these numbers are from memory, not measured, so take
them with a grain---or perhaps a whole shaker---of salt).

Tips (based on my experience---experts here might disagree):

1) Use a good potting soil (I get the best results with Miracle Gro, but
   YMMV).

2) Put one plant (not multiples) in each pot.  Once they really start to
   spread out, there won't be room for more than one....

3) Spread the pepper plants apart so that there's at least 3' between any
   pot and its nearest neighbor---based on what I saw last year, the
   pepper plants will expand to fill this gap (and then that whole
   section that expanded out will grow many off-shoots upward ... and all
   of that "real estate" is pepper producing)....

4) Water regularly while the peppers are just growing...but once they
   start to produce fruit, the general consensus seems to be to torture
   them by making them wait for their water until they can't wait any
   longer...as I understand it, the result is more/hotter peppers.  Seems
   to work, so I do it that way.

5) Do NOT use shallow planters, except, perhaps, for cayenne (unlike
   their cousins, they don't seem to care ... no idea why).  From what
   I've seen, pepper plants (again, except for cayenne) like to drop
   their root systems deep into the soil.  A 5 gallon bucket is great
   for tabascos...the shallower (but still not THAT shallow) black
   buckets I referred to did exceptionally well with habs last year.

Last year, my back-yard-sized pepper garden probably yielded more
habaneros and more tabascos than all of my previous gardens (since
ca. 1999).  What was the major change?  One thing:  spacing between
the pepper plants (see #3 above).  See
http://www.jstrack.org/chillis2008/ for pics (scroll down to the
"Pepper Garden (Sat/Sun ...)" section).

> Any particularly good web sites about growing peppers in buckets?

Probably...but I haven't run across them, so I'll leave that for someone
else to direct you (well, both of us) to.

HTH.

Later,
   --jim

-- 
73 DE N5IAL (/4)        | DMR: So fsck was originally called
spooky130u@gmail.com    |      something else.
< Running FreeBSD 7.0 > | Q:   What was it called?
ICBM / Hurricane:       | DMR: Well, the second letter was different.
   30.39735N 86.60439W  |    -- Dennis M. Ritchie, Usenix, June 1998.