Plant Peppers in Pots?

[tjohnson]

Can I plant some peppers in pots, and bring them inside next Fall?

Will they flower and produce all winter inside?


Todd

 

[ak1]

Yes & No.


A pepper is a tropical plant, and is perennial. So, theoretically it will produce all year round.

Where you may have an issue, is; How is the climate in the house? What may happen is that the plant will grow, but may not produce much fruit. Really, the only way to find out is to try.

 

[alblancher]

Just my observation.

I find that by the end of the summer the plants are pretty beat up and tired and even though we have pretty mild autumns and winters down here compared to what you guys experience they just look so bad that I do not bother keeping them. I believe they require the warmth of the summer to produce fruit so I am not sure if you would do much good with them at normal room temps.

You would do better getting an early start with heat mats and lights in the spring and having health plants to go outside when it warms up.

We use 5 gallon buckets to grow tomatoes so peppers should do fine. Just remember that you need to stay on top of the water during the summer when in pots.

Give it a try, I hope you prove me wrong.

Al

 

[cppbrian]

I live in southern california, so we never get a frost that kills the plants off. Before I ripped out the plants a month ago, we still had tabasco peppers and cayenne peppers still producing. The plants were a bit scraggly though. You can keep them longer, but if you want a lot of production, plant new plants each year as the younger plants will produce more fruit than the older plants will.

If you want to bring your plants inside for the winter, you may have to pollinate them yourself. I don't figure you will have bees goin around your living room. I hear you can use a q-tip to pollinate the plants.

 

[davidmcg]

Not sure if you could bring them in and get anything. It would depend on the humidity in the house and direct sunlight for 6 hours.

But other than that, you can definitely grow in pots, buckets or any other container. Be sure they have drain holes. We use 25 gallon feed buckets that we drilled 3/8" holes in the bottom. Put a layer of screen on the bottom, a layer of gravel, another piece of screen and then good dirt. Our plants are always tall and healthy. We do the tomatoes the same way. We also add a dozen live earth worms to each bucket. Just be sure to check them to be sure they have plenty of water on them. Being in pots they'll bake quick, even terra cotta pots.

 

[badfrog]

you can absolutely grow peppers in pots...the thing I discovered is that if you aren't religious about keeping them watered they will burn up...plants in the ground do better because the ground temp does not fluctuate as much as soil in a pot (that is probably sitting in the hot sun!).

What we did to combat the heat;
we put tomatoes in 5 gallon pots and then set THOSE pots in larger pots with about a 2 inch layer of straw as an insulation between the tomato pot and the bigger pot. This worked really well! we ended up watering by running the hose in the straw til it flooded over... the pot inside (where the tomato lived) seemed to take as much of the water as it needed before the straw dried out.

I would start a new pepper plant (or several depending on your needs) about every 20-30 days...this will eliminate the problem of all your plants "drying out" at the same time.