How Big of a Container Does a Pepper Plant Really Need?

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We enjoy growing peppers in our greenhouse. We plant some in the ground but we also grow peppers in containers. If you’re wondering how big of a container a pepper plant really needs, this article will interest you. 

Peppers take a notoriously long time to germinate – as in, it can take them 2 weeks to break through the soil after planting the seeds. That’s the first thing you need to know.

How to Grow Pepper Seedlings Indoors

We start our peppers in Styrofoam cups (that we reuse many times – I just be sure to wash them out well). The year I took these photos, I seeded the cups at the beginning of April.

The photo above was taken May 6; this shows you just how slow growing pepper plants are. So be patient when growing pepper from seed.

I like to let them get nice and root bound in the cups before transplanting them into larger pots.

Sometimes, we plant the peppers right into the ground in the greenhouse. This depends on the outside temperatures as our Greenhouse is unheated.

Here are healthy peppers waiting to be transplanted into the greenhouse. We’ve got a mix of Sweet Peppers, Bell Peppers and Hot Peppers.

Transplanting Pepper Plants

These peppers above have been transplanted from the Styrofoam cup right into the ground. The black jugs hold water and with the daytime sun, help give just a bit of heat to the seedlings.

These peppers have been transplanted from the cups into 2 gallon pots. Lots of room there to grow nice and big! Every plant is labelled with the variety.

I stick little pieces of biodegradable styrofoam peanuts in the drainage holes. Excess water can still get out, but I find it does save on water.

I like to have a few pepper plants on the porch, because the foliage is so beautiful when they’re nice and healthy. These pots are smaller than 2 gallon pots, but still lots of room for them to grow.

Fruiting peppers in the greenhouse. We run drip hose around the plants and put the watering on a timer, which saves us a lot of time every day.

This year ALL the peppers will be in pots, as we will need room in the Greenhouse to grow pole beans.

You can see that peppers can be put into containers of all sizes. You can do one pepper in a small pot.

If you’ve got large circular pots, plant 3 pepper plants together in there.

Since peppers crave sun and heat, be sure to put them outside in those conditions. If you’ve got a concrete retaining wall, walkway or patio, put a few pots of peppers on the concrete.

They will love and appreciate the extra heat being soaked up by the sun hitting the concrete.

So really…

How Big of a Container does a Pepper Plant Need?

Let me explain what happened. One year, I ran out of room putting peppers in the ground in the greenhouse.

We had so many plants I also used up all the 2 gallon pots I had.

After planting, I still had a few Styrofoam cups with pepper plants left over. These are the original reused coffee cups that I had started the seeds in.

I left them on the greenhouse shelf, until I could scrounge up more containers to transplant these peppers into.

But…life happened and I didn’t get around to it.

I just kept watering the seedling cups every day while I was checking out the rest of the veggies. Here’s a picture of the end result!

There’s 3 peppers on each of those plants and they even turned colour! So, you see, you don’t need to plant peppers in huge pots.

Look at the size of those peppers in these tiny cups!

So stop wondering how big a container a pepper plant really needs – just find any small pot and get started.

Think of what you could grow in even a regular size plant pot. If you live in an apartment with a balcony, you could easily grow some peppers in small containers.

This year, we are determined to grow and harvest a lot of peppers. The peppers will be preserved by dehydrating, pickling and maybe even turning into jelly.

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More info about growing Peppers