There is a pepper for everyone among the many available varieties, from sweet to scalding.
Yet, finding your number one pepper frequently implies bypassing the produce receptacles and becoming your own. Luckily, growing peppers is still simple even if you don’t have a yard or garden space.
Keep reading if you don’t have a garden but are interested in growing peppers to find your new favorite. We will share our favorite recipes for cooking with home-grown peppers, as well as nine tips for growing abundant peppers in pots and solutions to common issues.
Which varieties of pepper perform best in pots?
Pepper plants are a relatively compact nightshade, in comparison to eggplant and tomatoes. However, there are some varieties that thrive more than others in the constrained space provided by containers.
When planning your container garden, here are some pepper varieties to think about.
Bell Peppers: Growing these scrumptious favorites in pots is not as simple as growing some of their smaller cousins. Search for assortments of red, orange, yellow, or purple that experienced rapidly and keep a more minimized structure as they develop.
Bulgarian Carrot Peppers: Despite their name, these thin orange peppers are not as sweet as their name suggests. In point of fact, they are pretty damn hot—nearly three times as hot as the typical jalapeno. They are great for containers because they grow on bushy plants that produce dozens of fruits.
Bolivian Rainbow Peppers: These peppers are ideal for the front porch or container garden and are frequently grown as ornamental plants due to their stunning beauty. Hot peppers in a variety of colors, including yellow, orange, red, and purple, are produced by this large plant.
Fushimi Sweet Peppers: These thin, sweet peppers are delicious even when they are raw and have a crunchier texture than the similar shishito. They are also one of the easiest peppers to grow in pots, and throughout the summer they produce beautiful fruit.
Jalapeno Peppers: This well-known hot pepper is available in numerous sub-varieties that thrive in pots. When selecting a plant to include in your container garden, look for varieties with a shorter growing season or shorter height.
Poblano Peppers: These beautiful mild peppers, which are extra-large and have a deep green color, are the preferred variety for making chili relleno. This variety is known to thrive in large container pots despite their size.
Shishito Peppers: These long, green peppers have a light spiciness to them and are sweet. They are normal in East Asian cooking and make a delightful bite when sauteed with oil and flavors. They thrive when grown in pots, making them one of the easiest peppers to grow in general.
Whenever you have picked your pepper assortments, now is the right time to begin arranging and planting! To ensure the success of your pepper container garden, follow these nine steps.
1. Choose a Bright Spot When choosing a spot for your pepper container garden, sunlight is the most important factor to take into account. Each day, peppers require at least six hours of direct sunlight. However, more is better.
Peppers, like all nightshades, like heat. They flourish in daytime temps somewhere in the range of 70 and 80 degrees. They don’t like it to get much cooler at night.
Your pots will get plenty of heat and light if they are placed against a south-facing wall that gets a lot of sun.
2. Choose the Right Pot Some of the smaller pepper varieties will thrive in 8-inch pots. However, larger plants thrive best in containers with a minimum of a foot of diameter. In either case, the depth of your pot should be at least 10 inches to accommodate sufficient root growth.
The majority of peppers are best stored in buckets of five gallons. Choose a pot with a diameter greater than a foot if you intend to plant more than one pepper in each pot—something that is possible with non-bushy bell pepper varieties and others.
Make sure that the pot you choose has a lot of holes for drainage. Peppers thrive in well-drained pots, but they prefer moist soil. If necessary, drill additional drainage holes into the bottom of your metal or plastic container using a large bit.
3. Choose the Best Potting Soil The soil in pots is exposed to a significantly different environment than the soil in a garden bed. It cannot be aerated with earthworms or other bugs. Additionally, due to its smaller volume and inability to pull water from lower depths, it is much more likely to dry out.
Because of this, regular garden soil or dirt taken from the ground will not grow vegetables well in pots.
Instead, you need to buy specialized potting soil designed specifically for use in containers. This soil is quick to drain while evenly retaining moisture from top to bottom. It is likewise less inclined to compaction than different kinds so roots can inhale without any problem.
This organic potting mix from Espoma is one of our favorites.
4. Choose the Right Pepper Variety In the preceding section, we examined numerous container-friendly pepper varieties. For those who are unfamiliar with container gardening, this list is an excellent place to begin. However, the majority of pepper varieties can be grown in containers.
Use an extra-large pot for varieties that aren’t mentioned above or that aren’t specifically advertised for container planting. As a result, the plant’s roots will have more room to spread out and better mimic their natural environment.
5. Buy seedlings or start planting early The majority of pepper varieties take some time to mature, and all of them prefer to produce during the hottest times of the year. This implies that your window for developing peppers is genuinely restricted in many environments.
Pepper seeds can typically only be directly sown into pots if the pots can be brought inside until the plants are large enough and the weather has warmed up. You can also sprout your seeds in a greenhouse or on a sunny window sill before transplanting them into the pots when they are ready.
Beginning Seedlings in Cups
Photograph: rijok61 / Bigstock It’s easier to buy seedlings and plant them in your containers once the weather has warmed up. However, keep in mind that pepper plant seedlings will not be available in the same variety as pepper seeds.
6. Fertilize Twice a Month and Water Daily When the temperature reaches the hot temperatures that the peppers are accustomed to, it is likely that you will need to water your pots on a daily basis. Put your finger in the soil to check it. Give the pot a healthy drink if the top inch is dry.
Watering in the morning, before it gets hot enough to evaporate water quickly, is best. Additionally, this will ensure that your peppers do not remain overnight in soggy soil.
Since peppers produce organic product at such a quick rate, they require continuous treatment. This is especially true for peppers grown in pots because they lose a lot of their nutrients when watered. You can ensure that your peppers receive everything they need to continue producing by fertilizing them with a balanced vegetable fertilizer every two weeks.
7. Keep an Eye Out for Top-Heavy Growth Peppers don’t need any special care or trimming, but you should be careful not to let the plants get too tall. This is most normal in chime peppers and other huge pepper assortments.
The plant’s fruit production may cause the stem to begin to bend. On the off chance that this occurs, utilize a stick or bamboo post to set the plant up. Ensure that the plant is not snagged too tightly.
8. Collect When Ready
Most pepper assortments can be collected when the pepper first becomes green or when it has developed into a more lively variety.
For the overwhelming majority hot peppers, the less developed green natural product isn’t quite so hot as the more full grown red or orange. Similarly, gentle and sweet peppers will generally have more flavor after they have become yellow, red, or purple. What variety changes your specific pepper goes through will rely upon the assortment.
9. The majority of pepper varieties will continue to produce throughout the summer as long as the weather is warm. By picking organic product early and frequently, you can energize improved creation, particularly right off the bat in the season.
The plant may shed its flower buds and produce less when the temperature rises too high. However, the ripening of the existing fruit should continue (and the hot peppers will be much hotter!). During the hottest part of the summer, you should move your pots to a slightly cooler location to avoid this drop in pepper production.
You can bring your pepper plants inside to extend the season if you have a sunny window facing south. After a frost, any plants left outside will perish.
Problems You Might Run Into In general, when you grow plants in pots, you don’t have to worry as much about pests as you would in a traditional garden. Be that as it may, there are as yet a couple of issues to look out for while developing peppers in holders.
Pests: Whiteflies, aphids, and corn borers can occasionally harm pepper plants. Move your pots away from other plants and open soil if you notice any bugs pursuing them. Many different kinds of bugs that eat away at foliage can also be removed by washing the leaves with warm soapy water.
Bacterial leaf spot is a common problem that leaves round, yellowish-black spots on pepper plants’ leaves. Utilizing new soil each developing season and putting your pots from different plants will assist with staying away from this issue. On the off chance that you really do see a leaf with dark spotting, cut it off and discard it immediately to slow the spread.
Blossom End Rot: This disease causes the pepper’s blossom end to turn brown and mushy before the fruit has developed. A lack of calcium absorption is the root cause of blossom end rot. This problem should be avoided in potted peppers by fertilizing them on a regular basis and, more importantly, watering them on a regular schedule.
